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.
I think of the public aspect of my career the same way I think about exercising and saving money and being charitable.* It’s a habit. And if you’re waiting until you get all your ducks in a row – until you have the excess time or money or the job security – to start doing it, you’ll probably never do it. Which is fine. Not everybody cares to and not everybody should. (Though we are all supposed to exercise and save. Maybe even give. Right?) But if it is important to you (as it is to me) to have a public dimension to your research, a regulated and regular effort towards that end from the beginning may be the best path. This is not to say that I, junior faculty member, should be spending lots of my time writing research reports and engaging in other public sociology endeavors that will suck up my time and prevent me from meeting the benchmarks my institution sets for me. Great opportunities for engaged scholarship arise here, and there and I’d be foolish not to pursue them. But like so many things, the tricky thing is how to regulate and limit involvement my in these.
In terms of an investment of time and energy, spending 2 days a month on “public” projects is a tithe. I think the analogy to this religious practice is a promising one. Tithing takes discipline, and it is a sacrifice, particularly for those of us who are not very wealthy. But it also sets important limits on what one is required to give. Ten percent. No more no less. Why? Religious people who tithe do it because it’s what God requires. But I think the tithe resonates with people because in the grand scheme of things it’s so… reasonable. I know that ten percent of my salary is not going to save the world or even change it, but it’s a reasonable and tangible guideline, and I like it. If everybody did it, the world probably would be a different place. There are strong secular expectations for the fortunate to be charitable, but these expectations are unclear (though we all would probably agree that Brittney Spears and the Clintons were stingy last year and that the Jolie-Pitts were not), and they say nothing about how the “rest of us” ought to behave.
Boundaries and guidelines can be quite freeing, and applying the principle of a tithe to the public face of my early career has been helpful. My thinking on this is rooted in my understanding of how habits govern my own life. But it also rests on the fact that my research agenda centers on a “timely” social problem and waiting about 5 years to start joining the broader conversation might be a big mistake. So here I am with a research agenda in its infancy and dying to blow my horn in the arrogant way Tittle warns about. Yes and no. I have a pretty tight reign on that instinct, and a not-quite-paralyzing fear of embarrassing myself by speaking too soon. My nascent research agenda does not equip me to be proposing solutions and telling people how things should be done. But I think I can make a relevant contribution, primarily by voicing some of the many questions my research to-date has raised. These are things I don’t have answers to but would like to someday. And they’re questions we should be asking as research and activism on HIV transmission in high-prevalence contexts proceeds.
So that’s where I’m at on the public sociology question right now. 2 days a month. Now the question about what to be doing those two days? To be explored in a future post.
* Lest this post seem self-righteous, brining financial discipline, exercise, and time management into alignment has been an ongoing struggle for me. Still going.
April 22, 2008 at 4:34 am
hey jt. good points, and very much in line with my own thinking on the matter. i’d add that, in the light of day at least, i’m somewhat less concerned about the ‘rational’ part (e.g., what does it cost me) than the ‘legitimacy’ part (e.g., what right do i have, as a junior professor, to pronouce solutions when i am still learning myself) and the ‘conflict’ part (the extent to which influence in the public sphere conflicts with the tasks we need to complete to have influence in the professional sphere — which, also, should be related to the public sphere). How’s that for a circular argument?
this gets to your ‘what do i do with my two days point’ as that’s really the rub for me. on the plus side, my junior status limits the extent to which i can really screw things up by making pronouncements but it also suggests that it’s risky to do so and my feeling is that we don’t take this part as seriously. i’m less interested in having the discussion about whether or not to ‘do’ public sociology (since i’ve already decided to) and much more interested in how to do it well, what our knowledge really amounts to, and how best to control ourselves when in the rare and unlikely event that we are put in a position of knowledge producer for the public.
i’ll be reading with interest your discussion on what you’ll do with your two days. great post.
April 27, 2008 at 6:12 pm
The legitimacy issue is a very real one that I agree we should discuss more. There’s a lot of truth in your statement that we can’t really screw things up because junior status limits our impact. At the same time, I wonder if we’re not overestimating how much scholarly “pronouncements” – from junior people OR very respected senior ones – matter at all.
Put another way: How much damage can one WRONG sociologist really do?
I don’t mean to be flip about that. It can be depressing (our work doesn’t even make a difference!) or kind of freeing (i’m continuing to do my best, i publish and discuss results i’m confident in, and if in spite of all that, i turn out to be wrong….)
During my first trip to a scholarly conference, someone from the policy side of things asked a senior person in the field about the policy implications of his findings. This researcher TORE into the person, saying that in 20+ years of experience in the field, he had never once seen evidence that “you policy people” had read, considered, or taken any of the research on the topic seriously – not his own work and certainly not the body of literature as a whole. So why was he being bothered with this question now? Whoa. This squabble made quite an impact on me.
A great topic to keep discussing!