Adieu

I’ve decided to focus my recreational writing on some other projects and am pulling the plug on The Public and the Private. 18 months. 236 posts. 26 unfinished drafts. RIP.

 

Frankly, I would have preferred to be compensated with something useful, like a rear window defogger…*

Joseph Epstein in The Weekly Standard about why honorary degrees are stupid. There’s been quite a bit of commotion this year at Washington University in SL, Northwestern, and (sheesh) Boston University. Among the institutions abstaining from this practice: Cornell, Rice, and the University of Texas at Austin. Hook ‘em horns.

*Quote from The Week - marvelous publication.

 

Transcribing: Outsource or DIY?

In my last post, I thoughtlessly mentioned my irritation with requests to fund assistance with transcribing. I received two interesting comments that made me realize it’s a topic that deserves a bit more attention. Should graduate students plan to transcribe interviews themselves or to hire transcribers? The terrible answer, like everything else in academia: “it depends.” It depends on the scope of your project, your timeline, and the resources available to you.

I’ve transcribed myself and paid to outsource the job. A rational actor who can afford a transcription service will pay for it so they can spend their time on analysis and writing. I learned a lot when I transcribed my own interviews; I knew my data inside-out before I even started any systematic analysis. But I farmed out the job as soon as I had the money to do so. There truly is no glory in this kind of dirty work.

I’ve only reviewed proposals for small requests (<$10,000) aimed at supporting the “one-man-show” version of a thesis or dissertation. I make funding recommendations based on the project and not on the task - in other words, I’m inclined to give the proposals I support (the ones I go to the meeting prepared to put on the gloves for) what the student is asking for. A strong proposal convinces me that the research question is important and that study design is sound and feasible. In the successful proposal, the student has already convinced me that s/he is the expert, so I can trust that these students know what they need better than I do - transcription included. That said, in comparing two equally strong proposals where one asks for transcription assistance and the other requests support that is more directly tied to the collection of data, I’ve seen committees favor the latter and tend to do so myself.

This could be misguided. Students need support for finishing their projects as well as for starting them. Maybe these small grant competitions are biased towards data collection because they assume the recipients can get dissertation fellowships to support them in the later stages. I understand that things operate completely differently in the film world, where filmmakers can more easily get funding for post-production after they’ve emptied their own pockets and accumulated their own debt to gather their footage. Perhaps artistic and capitalist types like to invest only when there is a high level of certainty about completion, and scholarly organizations like to help get things off the ground.

 

Fieldwork logistics: electronics

Getting ready for the big departure, and preparing a few posts with packing, preparations, and spending tips. Whether you’re fortunate enough to be in the position of “spending down” money left in an annual start-up package, writing a budget for fieldwork expenses, or if you’re planning ahead and budgeting for these as out-of-pocket expenses, here’s a list of electronics I’ve found to be essential in the field. Please let me know if I’m forgetting anything you’ve found to be particularly useful.

 

Girls Like Us

Girls Like Us is first up on my summer reading list, thanks to today’s review in the NYT. Fingers crossed that it’s not merely a paparazzi-esque account of the personal lives of three fascinating artists but actually says something about gender, love, feminism, and art. And I hope the book doesn’t turn out to be actually about another, more famous JT. Salma Hayak’s Frida was mostly about Diego Rivera, and that annoyed me. I’ve never understood the strength of my own affinity for Joni Mitchell and her music. Thankfully, I’ve never suffered even a fraction of what she describes in her songs. Still, I find myself relating to them and having to remind myself - “um, no. that actually never happened to me.”  Carole King is my emergency karaoke pick - songs that are are short, sweet and in a key I can handle.  Close Your Eyes is CJC’s favorite bedtime song these days; hearing a two year-old belt out: “I can’t sing the blues anymore” to herself is truly outstanding.

 

Bad mommy

In addition to being one of those academic new mothers who thinks, talks, and writes a lot about figuring out the work family thing, I’m also one of those sociologists who collects data in a far away place featuring malaria, frequent food shortages, and an unsafe water supply. This summer will be our first shot at fieldwork as a family. I’m dreading the plane ride. I’m anticipating it being difficult at times - chaotic and unpredictable throughout. I’m anticipating a lot of swearing while hand-washing cloth diapers in the evening while trying to stay caught up on fieldnotes.  I can’t wait to test-drive my new status as mother; I know it will substantially alter the type of access I have, shedding new light on both the new project I’m starting and the older stuff I’m trying to publish. I can think of nothing better than pursuing the research I care very deeply about with my loved ones at my side. Did I mention that I can’t wait?

Most people would agree that in the context of causal conversation, it’s impolite to ask, “So what about [insert worst thing you can imagine happening to one's child here]? Aren’t you worried about that?” Yet as departure day nears, people are asking me this question multiple times a day. I’m afraid I’m going to lose it the next time somebody asks. Have I educated myself about the risks? Yes. Have GC and I had serious conversations about these that include planning for emergencies? Yes. Are health and illness randomly distributed? Do we have the resources to keep ourselves healthy? No. Yes. And sheesh; of all people, social scientists should know this cold! Logic combined with a little bit of statistical knowledge goes a long way in helping us justify the series of decisions surrounding our the decision to take the family to the field this summer. But I don’t feel compelled to argue my case here or to the individuals who casually ask me questions that would make any parent’s blood freeze.

I know the question is asked out of curiosity and without malice, but the question I hear is: “What kind of mother would expose her small children to unnecessary health risks for the sake of her career? Only a reckless, selfish, and very bad one! What kind of mother are you?” The problem is insensitivity to a pretty obvious type of role conflict - one that do-gooder liberal academics pride themselves on being attuned to.

Though I’ve had lots of helpful conversations with scholars and fellow adventurers who have made similar decisions, I’ve found surprisingly few resources and literature addressing this issue.  Fieldwork and Families offers some interesting perspectives on the problem but, as expected, no clear answers or even ready responses. I haven’t been able to find any blogs about traveling in remote-ish locations with little ones — probably because the demands of scholarship and family life in these settings leaves even less time for writing about it. With any luck, diaper washing and fieldnotes won’t totally sabotage my big plans to document some of the more personal and tedious aspects of our big adventure in service to the discipline. Happy Mother’s Day!

 

Three reasons I haven’t been blogging

- My IRB application

- Identity theft

- The infant-toddler, 1-2 punch

 

Pass it on

This Foundation for a Better Life billboard campaign to spread positive values has been puzzling me for a few years. Of course, I immediately wonder how they assess its impact. Surely they don’t rely on the unsolicited letters of praise inspired individuals send to them. Do they?

 

Habits

This started as a comment on NSP’s thoughts on tenure and public sociology but got lengthy….

NSP’s main point - the time to engage in public sociology is after tenure because spending too much time and energy on that while you’re junior might cost you tenure, and then you’ll never have the chance to make an impact as a leader in your field. There’s really nothing to argue with there. After tenure is clearly the optimal time for public engagement. But I still disagree with the “rational” approach of waiting until then to contribute here and there in a public way.

 

Sense of smell

I’m in spinning-head mode right now. Lots on my mind. Lots of it isn’t bloggable, and I haven’t really had the energy to wrap my head around the stuff I’ve been meaning to write about lately. So, in a complete and total non sequitur, I’m writing about a barrage of references to our most underrated sense.

Last night I grabbed our most recent issue of Vanity Fair - and saw this add on the back cover. FlowerBomb? Is it just me, or is FlowerBomb among the worst names you can think of for a perfume? Spoiled Milk would also be bad. Then, this morning, I caught this article about the perfume industry’s fear of bloggers. The people at MakeupAlley don’t hate FlowerBomb as much as I expected them too. It received 4 out of 5 “lipsticks,” which isn’t enough to make me want to try it. One perfumer said that “writing about perfume is like dancing about architecture,” but I disagree. Having also caught my first episode of Top Chef last night, I can’t see why is writing about smells is any stranger than watching television programs about food you’re not ever going to taste. Plus, the Times article makes no mention of the fact that lots of writers have captured smell gloriously on paper. My favorite example is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. I don’t remember any of the details of plot, but I smell bitter almonds (or was it burnt?) every time I even glimpse the copy sitting on my shelf.

Channel surfing, I caught 2 minutes of an old episode of Scrubs - the one in which JD makes a mistake that causes a patient to lose his sense of smell. The patient is yelling at him saying something like , “When you pick up your grandson for the first time, why don’t you call me and tell me how great his head smells!” It’s chiché, but it’s one of the things I’ve been most enjoying about little LEC. She’s in the cooing stage right now - makes the sweetest little noises - and smells so damn good. I don’t remember how long that lasts, but certainly not long enough.

Finally, our house is located smack dab in the middle of one of those square neighborhoods where living on one side has significantly higher status than living on the other. A new development that includes a Pei Wei has recently opened near the fancy side of our neighborhood. It’s been really windy these past few days. Let’s just say that I’m thankful we didn’t buy any closer than we did.