Chris Uggen's Blog

soundtrack to brooke

2012-04-12T21:08:00.003-05:00

Whenever I'm tempted to whine about the strains of academic life, I recall summer jobs cutting asbestos and spreading tar for minimum wage. By comparison, things seem pret-ty cushy down here at the brain mill. That said, we academics often sprint a bit harder at this time of year. Department chairs tend to shift into triage-mode, as we try to reconcile the important (curriculum, merit reviews, student registration) with the urgent (staffing events, payroll hiccups), and the urgently important (hiring, retention, personal crises for students, staff, and faculty).

The problem with triage is that slightly-less-urgently-important priorities (one's own research, service work, personal matters) tend to pile up and tangle themselves into a big hairy stress-inducing knot of unmet responsibility. I was fretting about these things tonight, when I happened upon the picture above. I have no idea why Brooke Harrington shared this groovy image on facebook and even less idea why it put me in such a good mood. But I figured I'd best spread it around a bit in case the feeling is contagious.

I had sooo many questions for the artist. Might the dancers be Ted Koppel and Dianne Sawyer, circa 1968? Judging from her shoes, bracelets, earrings, and dress, this was clearly not an era in which the kids worried about being too matchy-matchy. And where might I find the lad's boot-and-belt combo? I'd wear those tomorrow. Finally, and most importantly, what lurks beneath those awesome bangs? Their foreheads must be enormous!

In any case, Brooke's image was so affecting that I sought out the perfect soundtrack: Booker T. and the MGs at the height of their powers, grooving in some dance grotto.

Ah, that's better. Just a taste of green onions and we'll all be right as rain.

editing and the elements of style

2012-04-07T10:01:00.002-05:00

Professional editing is our "secret advantage" at TSP and this secret advantage has a name: Ms. Letta Page. Without her sharp-eyed and supportive editorial work, we'd be offering far less content on The Society Pages -- and what we could provide would be much sloppier and less readable. Together with web editor Jon Smajda, she's also responsible for much of the elegant design work and illustration you see around the site.

Associate editor Letta Page usually toils anonymously in her behind the scenes role as self-described editrix and language maven. Today, however, she's featured in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune style section. Letta's style and positive energy shine through in her editorial work, but she's also got killer fashion sense. Because her contemporaries are rarely so passionate about grammar, diction, and the (retro-cool) Elements of Style, she suspects that our authors tend to picture her as "the sort of editor who wears her glasses on a chain."

Ms. Page is also passionate about intellectual property, ensuring that we don't appropriate the work of photographers, writers, and artists without their permission. A shortened version of the article is online, but you'll have to purchase the newsprint version of this morning's Strib to see the full story and images.

Our authors don't care so much about our fashion choices, of course (which is fortunate, in light of the crimes against fashion routinely perpetrated by professors Uggen and Hartmann). But they do appreciate an editor who can simultaneously sharpen their prose and bring their ideas to full flower. Great editing, like great style, never goes out of fashion.

(don't) run in public

2012-03-25T17:54:00.001-05:00

In the wake of Trayvon Martin's killing, Jonathan Capehart relayed a couple of the "it ain't right, it ain't fair, but that's the way it is" lessons he was taught in youth: don't run in public, lest someone think you're suspicious; and, don't run while carrying anything in your hands, lest someone think you stole something.

I've followed and admired Mr. Capehart's clear and powerful writing since we met in the US-Japan Leadership Program. We don't know each other well, but I happened to have this picture of us onscreen when I came across his Washington Post op-ed and appearance on MSNBC. No, I'm not a stalker. I'd been prepping lecture slides for an upper-division sociology class, using the photo as a representation of "social drinking" as a respectable and sophisticated activity for upwardly mobile young adults.*

And there's the rub. When a black male is running down the street, we don't tend to notice his respectability, sophistication, or upward mobility -- let alone his youth or innocence. Yet the other four people in the picture can generally run with impunity, donning hoodies if we wish. Even those who resist ideas like "white privilege" can appreciate such simple and basic injustices, especially when writers as talented as Jonathan Capehart help bring them to light.

*As you might guess, I then follow-up with a few pictures portraying alcohol use in a less positive light.

James Q. Wilson and Hats

2012-03-03T18:16:00.000-06:00

Whenever I get to teach a criminology seminar, I always assign a little James Q. Wilson in the very first week. Not his influential writing on policing, mind you, but his powerful 1975 critique of academic criminology in Thinking about Crime. With his death this week, I'm Thinking about Wilson. Though we came from very different places, his work reshaped my approach and orientation as a social scientist, public criminologist, and TSP editor.

In that book, Professor Wilson argued powerfully and convincingly that (a) we lacked strong evidence about the most critical questions about crime policy; and, (b) we then fell back on our views as private citizens when we were consulted as crime experts:

[W]hen social scientists were asked for advice by national policy-making bodies they could not respond with suggestions derived from and supported by their scholarly work ... as a consequence such advice as was supplied tended to derive from their general political views as modified by their political and organizational interaction with those policy groups and their staffs (p. 49) ... I am confident that few social scientists made careful distinctions, when the chips were down, between what they knew as scholars and what they believed as citizens (p. 68).

During my first heady days of graduate school, I was simultaneously encountering similar ideas from Max Weber. But the spot-on power of James Q. Wilson's polemic hit me like a line drive to the chest. I immediately recognized myself as the sort of mushy-headed liberal who sought a Ph.D. credential as a bully pulpit for offering well-intended but baseless policy pronouncements.

After digesting Thinking about Crime, though, I resolved to conduct the sort of research that would provide a sound evidentiary base for policy. I cannot claim complete fidelity to this approach (nor, I suppose, could Professor Wilson), but it led me to research questions where I could make myself useful (e.g., employment and crime, felon disenfranchisement).

I've also taken to heart Professor Wilson's admonition to distinguish the research-based opinions we present as experts from those derived from our private beliefs as citizens. My friends and students recognize this as the "hat" issue: I'll offer a private opinion on anything from Tony Lama boots to the Fed's quantitative easing policy, but I try to be a little more circumspect when wearing the expert hat (which happens to be a brown fedora).

While I'll stipulate to some important "Yeah, buts" here (recognizing instances where we all stray from our high-minded ideals), Thinking about Crime still functions as both critique and call to action -- for individual careers and for whole disciplines. Engaging pressing policy questions can give added meaning and purpose to our work. But such engagement is most legitimate and authoritatitive when it is founded on a real base of knowledge, interpretation, and analysis.

The good news is that "what we know as scholars" has changed much since Professor Wilson wrote in 1975. Social scientists are today assembling a more powerful, relevant, and solidly credible evidentiary base; we are thus better able to offer policy suggestions "derived from and supported by our scholarly work," while also bringing much-needed global and historical perspectives to contemporary debates that would otherwise be framed too narrowly.

The ongoing challenge, for our careers and our disciplines, is to find new and effective ways to bring this knowledge and perspective to light. Hence, our mission at TSP: to bring social scientific knowledge and information to broader public visibility and influence. And regardless of your opinion on James Q. Wilson's scholarship or his political inclinations, he stood as a highly visible and remarkably influential public intellectual.

photo by lokarta (creative commons license)

congrats to Jesse and Mike

2012-02-21T19:52:00.000-06:00

Yes, it can be bittersweet when graduate students move on, but I'm delighted to update the advisee page when they've moved on to great places.

Jesse Wozniak accepted a tenure-track position at West Virginia University. He'll be finishing up his amazing dissertation on state reconstruction and the formation of the Iraqi police force this year (and maybe squeezing in a Twins game or two). Then he'll join some good friends and colleagues at WVU in January. Apart from his research, Jesse has been a popular and effective teacher at the Minnversity, so we'll miss him on many fronts.

Mike Massoglia (Ph.D. 2006) accepted a tenure-track position at my beloved alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. Mike has been writing influential articles the past few years from his own amazing dissertation on health and incarceration, but he's since taken up whole new agendas in life course criminology, housing mobility, and criminal deportation.

I'm glad for them both -- and selfishly happy to expand the network of potential couches upon which I might crash for my post-chair sabbatical road trip. Assuming they'd put me up for the night, I could couch-surf on the goodwill of former students from St. Paul, MN to Madison, WI to Milwaukee, WI to West Lafayette, IN to Morgantown, WV to State College, PA, to Bangor Maine, then back through St. Paul and Milwaukee to Portland OR, to Irvine, CA. Just leave the light on for me...

streetfighting for science

2012-02-19T00:54:00.002-06:00

I'm picking up a lot of good energy and ideas -- and meeting multitudes of kindred spirits -- at the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) meetings this weekend. I've been meaning to attend these meetings for years, so I jumped at the invitation to give a paper and let my (science) geek flag fly.

The most provocative session was a huge plenary on public engagement titled Science is Not Enough, moderated by former CNN correspondent and anchor Frank Cesno. The panelists were James Hansen (climate change scientist and author of Storms of my Grandchildren), Olivia Judson (evolutionary biologist and author of Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation), and the irrepressible Hans Rosling (international health innovator, known for his amazing TED talks and, of course, a TSP podcast).

Their themes will be familiar to TSP readers: (1) science is in a "street fight" with anti-science; (2) we could and should do a better job communicating scientific evidence to broader publics; (3) science reporting is often geared less toward accurately characterizing the state of knowledge in a field and more toward conveying two extreme positions; (4) the continuing struggle to simplify, clarify, and communicate our research without dumbing it down or burying important caveats; and, (5) the tensions between value-neutral objectivity and advocacy in public communication.

The panelists came from distinctly different places on these issues and their conversation seemed to echo conversations I've had with Doug Hartmann at our weekly editorial meetings. Dr. Judson saw her role as stoking scientific imaginations with the curiosity to know and the passion to care. Dr. Hansen more sharply emphasized how money and power could overwhelm scientific mesages (e.g., the petrochemical industry on climate change) and our responsibility as scientists to subsequent generations. Dr. Rosling viewed his role as seizing upon and illuminating intersections of public ignorance and indisputable scientific consensus.

There were lighter moments, of course, and a good bit more scatological humor than one might expect at the AAAS meetings. Hans Rosling was incredulous when other panelists claimed not to have time for facebook or twitter, for example, saying "that's like not having time to use paper on the toilet." He also got off a nice line about "peeing your trousers in winter" that I'll just have to save for my next lecture.

My own talk was in an early morning session on mass incarceration, organized by Bill Pridemore and Bob Crutchfield on behalf of the American Society of Criminology. The papers were strong, the audience offered great insights and questions, and some supersharp journalists followed-up afterwards with the sort of penetrating questions that took me years to formulate.

And I guess that's the challenge and the promise of good science communication. If a roomful of curious non-experts can somehow apprehend the crux of the biscuit at 8 am on a Saturday, there's no reason that sites like TSP can't do our bit to bring social scientific knowledge and information to broader public visibility and influence.

snark for snark's sake

2012-02-12T21:08:00.003-06:00

David Denby's polemic against smart-alecky new media types attracted a lot of, well, snarky reviews when it arrived in bookstores a few years ago. Of course, the First Amendment has protected all manner of speech about public figures since at least the Times v. Sullivan decision in 1964. Denby points to exceptions, but most serious journalists still seem almost constitutionally incapable of abusing such freedoms. In my view, the uglier snark story concerns not professional journalists, but the cultural transmission of snark involving all of us post breathlessly and nastily on social media.

It certainly seems easy to take shots at celebrities, politicians, and even our own friends and family with mean little missives on twitter or facebook. Watching indie darling Bon Iver on Saturday Night Live last weekend, for example, I wanted to post something clever about his descent through Coldplay territory and into Hornsby range (Christopher Cross won Grammys too, you know). After seeing Midnight in Paris, I felt a similar urge to tweet a line about Woody Allen's real genius being reflected in somehow rehashing Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure with actors lacking Keanu Reeves' emotional range. The trouble with such snark is that it isn't based on any real thought or analysis -- it is snark for snark's sake. I hadn't critically engaged Woody Allen or Bon Iver (much less Keanu or Coldplay) or even thought more than two seconds about it. I can't fathom the motives here -- are we in it for the "likes" and retweets? Do we feel better about ourselves when we rip the famous or successful?

Iggy Pop once said that "nihilism is best done by professionals" and so, I suspect, are such off-handedly cruel attacks. As an aspiring rock writer in the 1980s, I appreciated both the romantic humanism of Lester Bangs and the hyperliterate sneak atttacks of Robert Christgau. Mr. Christgau's wicked/smart capsule reviews, were peppered with mean and clever phrases like "idolization is for rock stars, even rock stars manqué like these impotent bohos" (on Sonic Youth) or "the words achieve precisely the same pitch of aesthetic necessity as the music, which is none at all" (on Radiohead) or "As bubble-headed as the teen-telos lyrics at best. As dumb as Uriah Heep at worst" (on U2). The quintessential Christgau review? The fictitious two-word appraisal of Spinal Tap's Shark Sandwich -- the very definition of snark.

But Christgau also did real analysis, as in this rumination on the Eagles: "Another thing that interests me about the Eagles is that I hate them. "Hate" is the kind of up-tight word that automatically excludes one from polite posthippie circles, a good reason to use it, but it is also meant to convey an anguish that is very intense, yet difficult to pinpoint. Do I hate music that has been giving me pleasure all weekend, made by four human beings I've never met? Yeah, I think so. Listening to the Eagles has left me feeling alienated from things I used to love. As the culmination of rock's country strain, the group is also the culmination of the counterculture reaction that strain epitomizes."

Most of the tweets I see on, say, the death of Whitney Houston or a politician's fall from grace aren't nearly so reflective, even when smart people are tossing them off. As a criminologist, I'm often trying to cultivate a little reflection and empathy in my students, so that they see criminal behavior as human behavior -- and the person convicted of crimes as more than the personification of a single, awful act. David Carr describes this duality with staggering clarity in telling his own story: "If I said I was a fat thug who beat up women and sold bad coke, would you like my story? What if instead I wrote that I was a recovered addict who obtained sole custody of my twin girls, got us off welfare and raised them by myself, even though I had a little touch of cancer? Now we’re talking. Both are equally true..."

Carr isn't being snarky, he's just an unflinching professional reporter trying to tell a complex story. One-sided snark, in contrast, simply "piles on" people at their weakest moments. I'll confess that after seven years of blogging, I've probably written my share of thoughtlessly cruel comments. Even when the object of your derision could not possibly be hurt by it, haven't you felt a little pang of regret after posting or repeating something petty, malicious, or unfounded? It feels, to me, as though I'd just binged on really unhealthy food or drink. Back when I was known to enjoy a beer or two during a flight delay, I recall getting some cheap laughs with an over-the-top Greta Van Susteren impersonation (don't ask) at the Detroit airport. Though nobody registered any dissatisfaction (and Ms. Van Susteren seems to be doing just fine, thankyouverymuch), I still feel rotten about it three years later.

So for now I'll stand with Denby -- in our bermuda shorts, watering our respective lawns -- and his old-fashioned assertion that mindless hair-trigger snark might somehow deplete us. If every cruel line in the snarkstorm represents an ugly little human transaction, is it so far-fetched to suggest that their collective weight might be dragging us down?

why haley barbour employed and pardoned convicted murderers rather than car thieves

2012-01-29T20:08:00.001-06:00

CNN's Anderson Cooper has devoted several recent crime and punishment reports to the pardons meted out by former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour. In several segments, Mr. Cooper seemed incredulous that convicted murderers were allowed to serve as "trustees" in the governor's mansion prior to their release. In one report, for example, he and attorney Jeffrey Toobin dismissed Governor Barbour's claim that murderers convicted of a single crime of passion were somehow better suited for such positions than inmates serving time for lesser offenses.

I will not comment here on the uses and abuses of the trustee (or "trusty") system, except to note that the practice was once widespread but waned considerably after the prisoners' rights revolution that began in the 1960s. Instead, I'm here to explain why Governour Barbour and his staff preferred employing convicted murderers rather than, say, convicted car thieves.

The chart below is taken from an excellent large-scale Bureau of Justice Statistics recidivism study (Langan and Levin 2002). Overall, 67.5 percent of prisoners were rearrested within 3 years of their release and 25.4 percent were returned to prison for committing new offenses (others were returned to prison for violating the terms of their release). If you click on the chart, you can see that people convicted of homicide have the lowest rate of recidivism as measured by rearrest -- 40.7 percent -- and the second lowest rate of return to prison for a new offense (10.8 percent). At the other end of the chart, about 79% of those convicted of motor vehicle theft were rearrested and about 31 percent were returned to prison after being convicted of a new crime.

This doesn't mean that a 20-year-old murderer is less dangerous than a 20-year-old car thief, of course. It just means that by the time we see fit to release people convicted of homicide, they are unlikely to pose a significant threat to public safety. Many have spent decades in prison and are much older than other inmates when they are finally freed. Convicted murderers make good candidates for pardons precisely because their sentences are soooo long relative to the risk that many of them pose at the tail-end of those sentences.

But aren't those convicted of killing especially likely to kill again? I mean, a 10.8 percent recidivism rate would be awful if half of those offenses turned out to be new murders. Contrary to all we've learned from Quentin Tarantino movies, however, homicide offenders tend not to specialize in killing.

The chart below uses odds ratios to represent the degree of specialization among people convicted of various crimes. Here, the 1.4 for homicide is the ratio of the odds that a homicide offender will be rearrested for another homicide (that's the numerator in the ratio) relative to the odds that prisoners released for other offenses will be arrested for a homicide (that's the denominator). You can see some evidence of specialization among those convicted of motor vehicle theft, where the odds of rearrest for a new auto theft are about 1.9 times greater than those for non-car thieves (2.9-1=1.9). There is an even greater degree of specialization for rape and other sexual offenses, with odds ratios of 4.2 and 5.9, respectively, corresponding to rates of new sex offenses that are 3-to-5 times higher than those for people convicted of non-sex crimes. For homicide, however, the odds ratio of 1.4 suggests comparatively little specialization.

I might also add that a great proportion of homicides are "cleared" by arrest, relative to the other offenses on the list, so it doesn't seem likely that rampant homicide recidivism is somehow going undetected by the system.

In short, there is much evidence that recidivism rates for people convicted of homicide tend to be particularly low. While it may be politically unpopular to pardon convicted murderers or to place them in positions of trust, they tend to do well when, at long last, they are afforded such opportunities.

impossible research

2012-01-17T17:01:00.000-06:00

Jesse Wozniak jets off to a job interview this week, where he'll talk about his research on state reconstruction and the new Iraqi police force. Jesse is an advisee, Contexts student board member, and frequent contributor to the Office Hours podcasts. All dissertations demand sacrifice, but this one posed particular challenges.

In fact, Jesse's project calls to mind what Pierre Bourdieu called "the craft par exellence of the researcher: investing a theoretical problem of far-reaching implications in an empirical object that is well constructed and controllable with the means at hand, that is, possibly, by an isolated researcher, with no funding, limited to his[her] own labor power." Doug Hartmann loves this passage, as it simultaneously conveys both the enormity of our task and our power and capacity to get it done.

The "theoretical problem" of civilian policing and state reconstruction certainly has far-reaching implications. I couldn't be 100% sure, though, that the "empirical object" of contemporary Iraq training academies was quite so "controllable with the means at hand." And, despite a fine academic record, Jesse had a tough time securing funding for his ambitious dissertation plan -- observations at training academies, interviews with officials, surveys and interviews with recruits in training, extensive archival research, and some very costly plane tickets and living expenses.

While he put in several grant and fellowship proposals, most reviewers and funders simply viewed the project as impossible. How could a single graduate student possibly secure human subjects approval, gain clearance from the Department of State, learn a new language, live and travel extensively in a war zone, and gain repeated access to the officials and recruits he planned to interview and survey?

Well, now he has done the impossible and returned with data in hand. When he didn't get funding, this "isolated researcher" was undaunted – he simply took on extra teaching and all manner of additional work so that he could self-fund the project. The proof, of course, will be in the pudding that Jesse is still preparing. Having seen the materials he brought back from Iraq, however, I'm confident that the hard work and fearlessness will pay off in a terrific dissertation and book.

In some ways, we're fortunate to work in a field where isolated researchers can still learn so much by the sweat of their brows. And while a couple years of cushy dissertation funding would have made Jesse's life a whole lot easier, I'm guessing that something real and true has been gained in the struggle.

* The quote is from page 156 of Pierre Bourdieu's 1988 "Program for a Sociology of Sport" in the Sociology of Sport Journal 5:153-161.
** The photo is from Ben Brears' photostream, licensed as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) under creative commons.

Stale Records

2012-01-13T17:31:00.000-06:00

Criminologists Al Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura offer a powerful New York Times op-ed this week, arguing that "stale criminal records" should expire when they can no longer distinguish criminals from non-criminals.

But this isn't just a couple of bleeding heart academics advocating on behalf of a stigmatized group -- there's a solid research foundation supporting the argument. Several smart and creative studies have now followed people arrested or convicted of crimes to watch how long it takes before a criminal's risk of a new offense drops to the point that it is indistinguishable from those with no record of past crimes.

Several teams of social scientists have designed really elegant studies to answer this important question. Most use some variant of event history or survival analysis -- a semi-fancy but straightforward set of statistical tools. Based on their own research, Blumstein and Nakamura now conservatively estimate the “redemption time” at 10 to 13 years. Megan Kurlychek, Bobby Brame, and Shawn Bushway came up with about a 6-year window using somewhat different data and methodology in 2006.

While the specific "time-to-no-crime" varies across studies, the best evidence is now calling into question standard "lifetime" bans on employment, voting, and other rights and privileges. This doesn't mean that the laws will be changed or even that they should be changed. But it does show how good social science can challenge old assumptions and inject much-needed evidence into public debates. And, for those of us who like to put our semi-fancy statistics to good purpose, the op-ed and the research beneath it offer a fine example of public scholarship.

teaching the 1 in 100

2011-12-14T19:14:00.000-06:00

I'm always impressed with teachers who blend established knowledge with shifting social currents, bringing it together in ways that students can understand and appreciate. My pubcrim colleague Michelle Inderbitzin seems to do this every year in her classes at both Oregon State University and Oregon State Penitentiary.

This fall, her Inside-Out Prison Exchange students combined a social fact (that 1 of every 100 American adults is incarcerated) with a new social movement (the We are the 99 Percent cry of the Occupy movement) , photographing prisoners and the people around them holding signs that shared their stories. The result is We are the 1 in 100, a class project and tumblr site that shows an important side of the American incarceration story.

As someone who works and teaches in this area, I rarely come across materials that render the lived everyday reality of prisons in such a clear, human, and intimate way. You can read Michelle's account on pubcrim or visit and add to the archive with your own photos and stories. It takes courage and trust -- and an impressive amount of work, in a 10-week class -- to bring these private moments and messages to light.

the pastiness of the long-distance runner / maroon and gold shoes

2011-12-12T18:53:00.002-06:00

Even in the most diverse cities, marathoners see mostly white legs and faces at the starting line. At Citings and Sightings, Suzy and Hollie point to a new Runner's World piece, which asks "Why is Running so White?"

This issue also arose at a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation meeting this year, when James Jackson noted that African American neighborhoods often provide few safe places to run, but ample outlets for fast food and alcohol. While both running and junk food can relieve stress in the short-term, their long-run health effects will differ dramatically. There are other reasons for race differences in running, of course, and the Jay Jennings article touches on everything from hair to role models.

In running, as in other sports, strong stereotypes persist about race and athletic ability. I once shared a starting line laugh with a fellow middle-aged, middle-of-the-pack runner ... who happened to be from Kenya. He said he was a slooooow runner but people seemed to make the assumption that all Kenyans must be faster than all Americans. Some were so convinced of his abilities they'd invite him to join the elite runners at the start of the race -- which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty horrifying prospect for middle-of-the-pack runners like us.

Speaking of running, I was resplendent in Minnesota colors at this year's marathon. This brought a few inquiries about exactly where one buys maroon shoes with gold swooshes and aglets. I fibbed that I had them specially commissioned, but these are really just "Nike Livestrong Air Pegasus +28," which can still be had for about $69 online. Fair warning, though: the kicks make for controversial office attire. Ann Meier, our Director of Graduate Studies, told me that they were not acceptable -- and most definitely not acceptable when one is bedecked in a maroon sweater and gold shirt.

i hope she brought enough for the whole class

2011-12-10T13:04:00.002-06:00

Food is important in every social setting, but it is especially salient for prisoners deprived of so many other comforts. For prisoners in disciplinary units, a meatloaf-like concoction known as Nutraloaf is often the only meal. Nutraloaf (sometimes called a "special management meal") is intended to meet the basic nutritional requirements in a "meal" that requires no utensils and minimal time to prepare or distribute. Nutriloaf -- and the whole concept of "disciplinary food" -- is so unpopular that prisoners have challenged its constitutionality in a number of jurisdictions.

I mention all this because Jesse Wozniak passed along this class project from Micaela Magsamen, a student in his policing class this semester. Hearing Jesse's mention of Nutraloaf in lecture, Ms. Magsamen decided to prepare and taste-test one recipe for the loaf (which includes both tomato paste and applesauce), photographing and powerpointing the results. While I didn't taste-test this version myself, I'd imagine that such an exercise might change one's view on the whole constitutionality issue.

what manner of bacchanalia?

2011-12-03T18:53:00.000-06:00

Because our department always seems to be celebrating something, Dean Jim Parente often asks, "What manner of Bacchanalia goes on in Sociology this week?" Well, it wasn't exactly bacchanalia (that's Izze's sparkling clementine juice, I'll have you know), but the denizens of the society pages enjoyed a fine party Wednesday at Wing Young Huie's supercool gallery, The Third Place. It was the perfect space and moment to thank our friends, commemorate our final Minnesota issue of Contexts magazine, and to begin turning the (society) page.

We were honored to feature a sampling of Wing's photographs in our final issue, which nicely punctuates a line tracing the sociological imagination of great artists, social entrepreneurs, and cultural observers -- Sebastião Salgado’s photography; the art of Anne Taintor and Harvey Pekar; and, the wit and wisdom of rock critic Chuck Klosterman, humorist Dylan Brody, and magazine entrepreneur Eric Utne. Editing Contexts was always intellectually stimulating, but it was positively thrilling to engage such work with the sociological enterprise.

As for the party, we had a great turnout, tons of fun, and a fitting tribute to a project that brought together so many good people in so many capacities the past few years.* Doug, Letta, and I feel humbled and grateful to have worked with so many brilliant contributors and colleagues at Contexts, the American Sociological Association, and around the world. We only wish we had the budget to fly you to beautiful Minnesota for an enjoyably brisk winter's night. As you can probably guess, though, it won't be too long at all before we'll have another big announcement, celebration, and (yes) some measure of bacchanalia to share with the new TSP crew. Just drop us a line if you'd like an invite.

*If you squint real hard you can see folks like Linda Henneman of ThinkDesign (who did amazing work putting our pages together); national board members and contributors like Monte Bute and Andrew Lindner; undergrad students like Sweet Al Casey; grad board alums such as Wes Longhofer, Hollie Nyseth, Suzy McElrath, Jesse Wozniak, Sarah Shannon, Kyle Green, and Kia Heise; good university friends like Elizabeth Boyle, Rachel Schurman, Michael Goldman, Teresa Swartz, Ann Miller, Alex Rothman, Ann Meier, and Mary Drew; and, plenty of family and friends, including Harper Inea, 2051-2054 Contexts editor.

best winter songs - 2011 update

2011-11-23T19:04:00.002-06:00

When I put up a list of winter songs in 2007, I really just wanted to spread a li'l love for flexible flyers and skyways. But so many folks are googling "best winter songs" that I try to patch up the links, update the list, and work in a few suggestions every year. Maybe I'm just paying more attention today, but I'm sensing a wintersong resurgence -- I added 5 songs for 2010, but could easily have added 5 more.

Almost everyone loves a good summer song, but what about winter songs? I'm not talking about played-out Christmas carols here, but other songs of the season.

Winter themes sometimes evoke bleak landscapes and chilled emotions. As a Minnesotan, however, I also associate winter with feelings of love, warmth, and safety. So, there's a duality in this list that is less apparent in summer music. There's also more cabin-fever inspired oddities than one might find on a summer list.

Here are links to a few personal favorites (and a few less-than-favorites), organized chronologically. I'd love to see your additions, since i'm guessing there's an iceberg of undiscovered wintersongs just beneath the surface. Stay warm...

• ol' hank, cold, cold heart (1951) and norah (2002) [via sarah]
• chet baker, grey december (1955)
• dean martin, baby it's cold outside (1959)
• albert iceman collins, frosty (1962)
• ian and sylvia, four strong winds (1963) [via travis]
• bob dylan, girl of the north country (1964)
• mamas and the papas, california dreaming (1965)
• simon and garfinkel, hazy shade of winter (1967) & bangles (1987)
• gordon lightfoot, song for a winter's night (1967) & sara mclachlan (1996)
• grateful dead, cold rain and snow (1967) [via @createsociology]
• doors, wintertime love (1968)
• ann murray, snowbird (1969) [see also elvis (1970) sufjan (2006)]
• nico, frozen warnings (1969)
• plastic ono band, listen the snow is falling (1969) & galaxie 500 (1992)
• bob dylan, winterlude (1970)
• neil young, helpless (1970)
• mountain, nantucket sleighride (1971)
• nick drake, northern sky (1971)
• black sabbath, snowblind (1971)
• rolling stones, winter (1973)
• edgar winter group, frankenstein (1973) with johnny winter (1992)
• gil scott-heron, winter in america (1974)
• reo speedwagon, ridin' the storm out (1974)
• frank zappa, don't eat the yellow snow (1974)
• steely dan, charlie freak (1974)
• rush, by-tor and the snow dog (1975)
• tommy bolin, sweet burgundy (1976)
• neil young, winterlong (1977) and pixies (1989)
• steve miller band, winter time (1977)
• jerry "snowman" reed, west bound and down (1977) & breakdown
• the cure, winter (1979)
• squeeze, up the junction (1979) and if i didn't love you (1980)
• joy division, love will tear us apart (1980)
• klaus nomi, the cold song (1982)
• peter auty, walking in the air (the snowman) (1982)
• aztec camera, walk out to winter (1983)
• stevie ray vaughan, cold shot (1984)
• husker du, flexible flyer (1985)
• replacements, here comes a regular (1985)
• dream academy, life in a northern town (1985)
• replacements, skyway (1987) & jeremy messersmith (2009)
• husker du, ice cold ice (1987)
• the pogues, fairytale of new york (1988)
• jane siberry, hockey (1989) [via kieran]
• vanilla ice, ice ice baby (1990)
• guy, let's chill (1990)
• tori amos, winter (1991)
• albert collins, iceman (1991)
• screaming trees, winter song (1992)
• social distortion, cold feelings (1992)
• xtc, always winter never christmas (1992)
• radiohead, fake plastic trees (1995)
• hoven droven, okynnesvals (1996)
• mazzy star, flowers in december (1997)
• hedningarna, hoglorfen (1997)
• svala björgvinsdóttir, once upon a december (1997)
• eagle eye cherry, save tonight (1998)
• madonna, frozen (1998)
• sigur rós, svefn g englar (1999)
• aim, cold water music (1999)
• glay, winter again (1999)
• nick cave, fifteen feet of pure white snow (2001)
• low, last snowstorm of the year (2002)
• nada surf, blizzard of '77 (2002)
• white stripes, cold, cold, night (2003)
• fountains of wayne, valley winter song (2003)
• animal collective, winter's love (2004)
• the caesars, the winter song (2005)
• afi, love like winter (2006)
• joshua radin, winter (2006)
• red hot chili peppers, snow (2006)
• iron and wine, wolves (songs of the shepherd's dog) (2007)
• elliott smith, angel in the snow (2007)
• gwen stefani, early winter (2007)
• bon iver, skinny love & flume (2008)
• fleet foxes, white winter hymnal (2008)
• glasvegas, S.A.D. light (2008)
• the avett brothers, january wedding (2009)
• sleigh bells, ring ring/rill rill (2010)
• MGMT, siberian breaks (2010)
• the coral, walking in the winter (2010)
• vampire weekend, horchata (2010)
• the kissing party, winter in the pub (2010)
• the decemberists, january hymn (2011)

me and the board

2011-11-22T22:45:00.005-06:00

The last Minnesota-grown issue of Contexts has now officially mailed, ending my 4-year hitch as a magazine editor. The section editors and authors were amazing and I learned a ton working with co-editor Doug Hartmann, Letta Page, Jon Smajda, and the good folks at the American Sociological Association. Truth be told, however, I found the most joy in working with our graduate student board. Stop by my office sometime to take in the wall display at left, showing the student board in all their creative glory.

As we write in our last "From the Editors" column (below), Contexts now rests in the good and capable hands of new editors Jodi O’Brien and Arlene Stein -- I hope they have as much fun with it as we did. We haven't broken up the band, though, so you can still check us out at thesocietypages.org.

In the meantime, here are a few last words:

Naked Dreams

We’ve all had some variant of the “naked dream”—you’re waiting in line at Starbucks or checking the copy machine at work when it dawns on you: you’re completely undressed. Here at Contexts, our authors have that dream all the time.

Writing a 3,000 word feature for a public audience, our contributors must dispense with the everyday apparel of scholarly publication. The layers of conceptual abstraction, the high-end designer methods and statistics, and the foundational undergarments of literature reviews—all gone. With all that stripped away, there’s no way to conceal vulnerabilities and authors can feel pretty exposed. As in naked dreams, though, when we first begin writing for a public audience, we tend to exaggerate the risks while underplaying the liberation and exhilaration that comes from breaking new ground. But that doesn’t mean the risks aren’t real.

We saw a bit of this in the kerfuffle over the American Sociological Association’s award for “Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues,” which went this year to New York Times columnist David Brooks. When sociologists protested, in part due to Brooks’s conservative politics, the knee-jerk opposition seemed to undermine calls for broad-based public relevance and engaged scholarship—or, at least, to recast those calls as more narrowly partisan projects. While we might disagree with how Mr. Brooks uses our work, we defend his right to read, interpret, and mobilize sociological research and appreciate his high-profile efforts to do so. (Indeed, you may remember that we learned a lot about the challenges of disseminating sociology from Brooks in an interview published in one of our first issues.) We’ve actually heard similar professional resistance to popularizers like Malcolm Gladwell who distill and market social science for audiences a thousand times larger than that of our flagship journals. Even when members of our own tribe cross over and achieve a modicum of popular success, critics seem to burst from the woodwork to call into question their seriousness.

We’ve always tried to come from the other side at Contexts, putting our editorial energies into celebrating and effectively conveying good social science with real public relevance. Our graduate and national boards, web and section editors, and managing editors Letta Page and Amy Johnson have made heroic efforts in support of this mission. Our final issue features some terrific examples, with pieces on innovation, adoption, recreation, and closure. Sociologists have something important to say about such irreducibly social phenomena, and it has been our joy and pleasure to help tell their stories.

We couldn’t do any of this, of course, without your indefatigable energy as readers and supporters. Rest assured that new editors Jodi O’Brien and Arlene Stein will bring a fresh perspective that takes Contexts in exciting new directions. We’re cooking up some new ideas as well, developing and expanding our web-based project at thesocietypages.org, which will continue to host contexts.org. While such transitions might leave us feeling a bit exposed, we’re even more exhilarated about finding new ways to bring social science to broader publics.

google scholar and high-impact publication

2011-11-20T20:18:00.003-06:00

Academics feel narcissistic or anti-intellectual when we check citations to our work, but it isn't just an ego thing. Citations tell us who is using our research and who we should be reading -- a big help in making intellectual connections. If we really want people to read the work we spend so much time writing, then we need to figure out why some articles rise and others (ahem) drop from cite. Analysis can also reveal correctable mistakes. We may have written the right paper for the wrong audience or used a title or abstract that all but guaranteed our work would never be read or referenced.

I ran the numbers, but never looked much at citation indexes until seeing Google Scholar, which tends to be more inclusive and useful than other indexes. Editing thesocietypages.org, though, I'm starting to think we need new ways of measuring both scholarly and public impact. For example, I'm convinced that Lisa Wade and Gwen Sharp are having an enormous impact at sociological images, but it isn't (yet) counted in ways that make sense to the Social Science Citation Index or Google Scholar. I'm not just talking about hit counts -- increasingly, students and other scholars are adopting the site's sensibility and and its application to the visual social world.

For now, though, Google Scholar represents a huge advance over the sort of citation trackers we had just a few years ago. Seeing Philip Cohen's google scholar profile this morning, I made my own. A few observations:

1. Scale. Before constructing such a profile, you should know that some people and papers get cited a lot, but it takes most of us a few years to develop an audience. Nobody cited my stuff at all as an assistant professor, but folks began excavating the nuggets once a few pieces got a little attention. In Google, as elsewhere, try not to compare yourself against the standard set by the top senior scholars in your field (a.k.a. "Sampson Envy").

2. Inclusiveness. Google scholar is indeed more inclusive than other sources. For me, at least, it includes three times the citations and twice the number of writings than SSCI (2,578 citations in Google to 84 "things" (articles, chapters, grant reports, committee documents) and 767 citations in SSCI to 35 journal articles)). Some may find it overinclusive, but Google seems far more effective in bringing to light intriguing intellectual connections. For instance, I learned that a Swedish economist found use for one of my papers in a presentation on the "entrepreneurial life course of men and women" -- which jazzed up my own thinking about a project on entrepreneurship and prisoner reentry.

3. Bias? For me, at least, the Social Sciences Citation Index seems to give a pretty misleading picture of scholarly impact. Since SSCI doesn't count books or book chapters, it misses a couple more-cited pieces -- a book with Jeff Manza and a popular chapter in an edited volume. [Junior scholars are often told to avoid writing book chapters, but some of them seem to find a pretty good audience.] Also, when I rank the articles by citation count, Google seems to have better face validity -- it does a better job picking up the contributions that people ask me about than SSCI. As chair in a department that values both books and articles, the omission of books in any index is really problematic. I haven't done a careful analysis, but my sense is that Google Scholar is also better than SSCI at tracking my criminological and interdisciplinary work.

4. Flagships. But still .... articles in the so-called sociology flagships get cited way more often than articles in other journals or book chapters. By either index, my 3 most-cited pieces (and 6 of the top 16) appeared in American Sociological Review or American Journal of Sociology.

5. Future. I expect that people will always want to assess the scholarly and public impact of academic work, and that these tools will evolve rapidly. Google Scholar offers a great set of tools already, but I suspect we'll soon be able to run much more sophisticated searches that allow us to track impact across a broader spectrum of outlets. People are sure to debate "what counts" as a citation, but the really big honkin' question concerns "what counts" as scholarly publication. My sense is that journal impact will remain important, but we'll soon have the tools to identify and assess a more robust and varied set of impacts.

fresh crim at ASC meetings

2011-11-19T17:56:00.000-06:00

I arrived late and left early at this year's criminology meetings, but the two days in Washington, DC were terrific. I'm always inspired by forward-looking talks that put a big issue on the table, especially those that could spark public discussion and, perhaps, intervention.

The paper that really turned my head this year was Bob Agnew's general strain model of the impact of climate change on crime. Professor Agnew made a convincing and nicely documented case that climate change will "increase strain, reduce social control, weaken social support, foster beliefs favorable to crime, contribute to traits conducive to crime, increase opportunities for crime, and create social conflict." After 15 minutes, he had me convinced that climate change could become a driving force of crime rates over the next century.

Sara Wakefield and Simon Cole offered a similarly future-directed and provocative talk on racial disparities in DNA databases. Every state is now collecting DNA -- in many cases for arrestees, as well as those convicted of crimes. While acknowledging potential gains to public safety, the paper raised large and timely issues about how such data collection affects surveillance and inequality. We heard evidence about what the databases look like now, but everyone in the room expected them to grow dramatically in coming years.

I've worked a lot with Sara, of course, so I'm not exactly unbiased about her work -- or that of other Minnesota grads at the meeting (including the program co-chair, Ryan King). This year, I gave talks with current grad students Suzy McElrath (above), Jessica Molina, and Heather McLaughlin (all attending their first ASC meeting), as well as Brianna Remster of Penn State. I mostly sat in the background scribbling (as above), while my collaborators did the heavy lifting.

My only solo presentation came at Madam's Organ Blues Bar's Thursday night Karaoke. Like the two papers above, my rendering of Sinatra could spark public discussion and, perhaps, intervention.

laundering honoraria

2011-10-08T16:03:00.003-05:00

I love visiting friends and giving talks, so I jump on invitations whenever my teaching schedule permits. When my host asks, "will $500 be sufficient for your honorarium?" I reply, "Gosh, I'd love to visit you guys, but I can't afford to pay that much."

Cheeseheads and hardball fans will recognize this riff on Bob Uecker's first contract: "I signed with the Milwaukee Braves for three thousand dollars. That bothered my dad at the the time because he didn't have that kind of dough. But he eventually scraped it up."

Like Mr. Uecker, I rarely turn down a free dinner, though I'm often backed up for a year or more on such commitments. It is lovely to get paid and I sincerely appreciate it, but the real reward is in the intellectual exchange -- and, let's be honest, the rush of validation you feel when people are right there in front of you, engaging the ideas and work you've been casting into the ether from some lonely academic bunker (a/k/a the collosal ego trip).

As I recently mentioned to a friend on facebook, I charge a sliding scale. With the Deluxe Package, I'll give a presentation in exchange for airfare and a nice dinner. With my Budget Package, I'll sometimes pop for the airfare, but you have to give me a plaque of some sort and say nice things about me at the dinner. The plaque is key.

In keeping with my honoraria post five years ago, I try to redirect the bulk of the money to organizations providing direct services to people leaving prison and non-profits that conduct justice-related research. The need is great and I'm already paid pretty well to study the hard times of others. That said, it is usually a hassle for universities to redirect an honorarium to such organizations -- it is much cleaner for the staff when they can simply cut a check. The problem with cashing the check and sending it elsewhere, of course, is that it looks like income to the IRS and a good chunk is lost to taxes before it can be passed along.

These days, I'm laundering my honoraria through the Minnversity's annual community fund drive (open now through 10/31). I just cash and spend the check myself (and report it to the IRS), but use payroll deduction to direct a corresponding amount to organizations doing reentry programming and research. I'll identify the local orgs offline if any Minnversity friends are interested -- there are several available for check-off but you can also write-in your own. In truth, I haven't been redirecting the full amount of the honoraria I've received, using some of the funds to cushion unreimbursable out-of-pocket expenses (related to my editorial, advising, research, and chair duties) and to purchase certain performance-enhancing research stimulants (such as 5-pound buckets of black licorice). Still, I'm hoping this sort of model might work for others -- it is deducted painlessly from pre-tax earnings, can be spread evenly throughout the year, and shows up clearly on one's paycheck at tax time.

While my schedule is pretty full for 2011-2012, I'll keep giving talks next year and for as long as people will have me. To quote Mr. Uecker, "Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat."

blissitude and blisteration

2011-10-02T19:58:00.003-05:00

I like to write a personal blissed-out marathon post a few hours after the event, but it took a bit of work to attain full blissitude today. Last year it was a smooth and happy 3:43. The 2011 twin cities race was just a hair faster, but considerably more ... jagged. There was a little pain, including hoof blisteration, acute foreleg crampage, and the Andy Bernard-level nippular excoriation shown at right, which just made a mess of my favorite Minnversity singlet.

But it was a perfect fall day in Minnesota to cruise through the cities and see wonderful friends and family -- I was surely feeling the love from Dad, Letta, Sarah (and boys), Gabrielle, Liz and Matt, Nicole, Emily, and other good friends along the way. And, this was the first time I'd ever shared a race with a (co-)advisee (and proud finisher), Suzy Maves McElrath.

Closed-circuit to running geeks: Yeah, I pushed too hard again at the start (23:36 at 5k (I was gonna dominate that 5k), 47:50 at 10k (I was gonna dominate that 10k), and 1:41:52 at 13.1 (I was gonna dominate that half). Then I was completely dominated by the 6 miles of piddling but relentless grade on ol' Summit Hill -- while accosted, I firmly believe, by an invisible marauder who somehow severed my hamstrings on the steeper bits. I suspect he used a laser.

So I'll either have to slow down at the start or do some actual training if I'd like to keep up the pace. A helpful young runner from Nebraska suggested that her hometown marathon might be a li'l flatter (yes, flatter than Minnesota) and, hence, more amenable to my fixin'-to-pop hammies. She also promised a good bit less writhing in the final three miles.

A few other marathon posts:

2005: Battling T-Paw

2006: Hot n' Heavy and Too Beautiful

2007: Marathon Convergence and Steamy and Cool

2008: My Left Foot and Sweet

2010: Men of a Certain Age

jail guitar doors

2011-09-29T19:58:00.001-05:00

My colleague Josh Page's The Toughest Beat (2011, Oxford) is getting much-deserved good press from many quarters. Today's props come from Wayne Kramer, the MC5 guitarist now writing at Jail Guitar Doors. Mr. Kramer calls The Toughest Beat a "well researched history of how the prison guards union grew from a minor municipal association into the second most powerful political lobby in California. It’s a fascinating journey into power politics."

So how do legendary guitar players end up reviewing cutting-edge scholarship in the sociology of punishment? The name Jail Guitar Doors comes from a fine old Clash song that name-drops Mr. Kramer, who once served time in Lexington Federal Prison for a drug offense. His work with the MC5 once earned him 92nd place on Rolling Stone's all-time top-100 guitarist list. Today, he's working with Jail Guitar Doors, an organization that Billy Bragg and friends put together to provide prisoners with musical equipment in the United Kingdom and, now, the United States.

I can't cite rigorous evaluation data to show the positive effects of such programs, but it doesn't take a top-100 guitarist to grasp the group's vision: We believe prisoners provided with the musical tools to create songs of their own can achieve a positive change of attitude that can initiate the work necessary to successfully return to life outside prison walls. Creating music, along with other educational and vocational programs, can be a profound force for positive change in a prisoner’s life.

If the idea hits you like Wayne Kramer power chord -- or if you've ever just found a little peace and focus while plunking away at an instrument -- you might consider a donation.

our mauer, ourselves

2011-09-24T17:43:00.002-05:00

For a guy being paid $21 million to play baseball, Joe Mauer has sure had a tough season. Mr. Mauer only participated in about half of the Minnesota Twins' games this year, and only about one-third of them at his customary catcher position. His performance in these games was respectable in absolute terms, but far below the high bar he established in previous seasons.

According to SI.com, Mr. Mauer missed games for myriad maladies, including bilateral leg weakness, viral infections, undisclosed soreness, general soreness, stiff neck, upper respiratory infection, and, finally, mild pneumonia. Since General Soreness is not the sort of injury that typically knocks a superstar from the lineup, rumors and speculation have arisen to explain the real story behind his absences.

As regards a Minnesota icon like Mr. Mauer, such gossip occurs in a wide range of social settings. As Gary Alan Fine and Nicholas DiFonzo note in their new Contexts article, rumor is "knowledge filtered through social process," depending on local networks for verification. This means that the rumors swirling around Mr. Mauer -- as well as those not swirling around him -- say as much about the hometown as they do about the hometown hero. I've heard four basic categories of rumors and will speculate about a fifth.

First, when the team remained in contention a few months ago, one heard that the Twins were intentionally concealing a more serious injury that would have provided a strategic advantage to opposing teams. If he had a "bad wing," as a neighbor suggested at my community center this summer, opposing baserunners would steal more aggressively against the Twins. Such interpretations seem credible and rational, given the game's competitive nature and high stakes. Moreover, the guy was coming off knee surgery and he has a history of (unquestioned and legitimized) injuries in the recent past.

Second, I heard rumors of career-threatening (and, in some cases, life-threatening) physical health problems. These rumors ranged from Lyme disease, to rheumatoid arthritis, to multiple sclerosis, to ALS. Some of these appeared in print, I think, but most came from people claiming inside knowledge -- "a guy who knows a guy" within the Twins organization or the Mauer family. Some were repeated by Patrick Reusse and others on talk radio, though the local media have been guarded about making such attributions. Nevertheless, these rumors were considered plausible, in part, because of the local setting: Lyme disease is quite prevalent in Minnesota and familiar to Mr. Mauer's fans, while ALS is literally synonymous with another baseball great struck down in his prime -- Lou Gehrig.

Third, as the team's fortunes sank and their highest-paid player remained out of commission, some fans began grumbling about Mr. Mauer going "soft" -- that he was spoiled by the big contract or, worse, that he was a "cake-eater" all along, who lacked the toughness needed to play with pain. These are fighting words for athletes, of course, but such interpretations seemed plausible for those suspicious of the team's new big-money approach and expensive new stadium, funded in part with taxpayer dollars.

To the extent he is cast in the "sick role," Mr. Mauer is exempted from responsibility for his conditions and from the normal role obligations and responsibilities of his profession. But if he's just soft, he's judged against all manner of personal and professional gendered role expectations. Today, there's a passionate local debate between those who view Mr. Mauer sympathetically and attribute his absences to physical health problems and those who view him unsympathetically and vilify him for weakness and moral failure.

A fifth category of non-rumor is conspicuous by its absence, however: the possibility that Mr. Mauer might be wrestling with some unseen and unsharable mental health or chemical health problems. Given his status as a white St. Paul native with middle-class origins (like me, I suppose, though a generation removed), it is especially easy for many of his fans to identify with Mr. Mauer and, perhaps, correspondingly difficult for them to imagine him in a more stigmatized role.

Of course, mental illness and substance use problems are managed and treated just as effectively as those physical ailments that more typically put players on the disabled list. And, just to be clear, I am not suggesting that Mr. Mauer has ever had any problems with substance use or mental illness. I'd just hate to think that fear of adverse public reaction would keep a public figure from seeking help, especially here in the land of 10,000 treatment centers (in 2011, no less). It just strikes me that it might still be difficult -- if not unimaginable -- for Minnesotans to accept our native son as mentally ill or "addicted." Somehow, despite much evidence to the contrary, the community may simply be more comfortable imagining the twenty-eight-year-old athlete as terminally ill or incurably lazy. While the latter rumors have been much discussed, the former have scarcely been mentioned.

For my part, I'm attributing the rumors to what professors Fine and DiFonzo call a "shared commitment to sense-making" in the absence of clear information. As for the vague injury reports, I'll chalk them up to the local context as well. For the team's baffling public relations work and passive-aggressive motivational strategies seem as Minnesotan as walleyes and honeycrisp apples.

identity work and personas

2011-09-13T19:40:00.002-05:00

The savvy Sarah Lageson sends word of Personas, an MIT project created by Aaron Zinman. Personas uses sophisticated natural language processing to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. The idea is to show folks how the internet takes them apart and reassembles them -- sort of a critique of data mining embedded within a cool data mining project. Simply stop by the site, launch personas, and let the digit counters fall. Then reflect or recoil as your online world flashes before you (cranking vintage Kraftwerk at volume may enhance the effect). Sarah sent me the personalized screenshot below, but personas is really more about process than product.

new contexts reader

2011-08-13T23:56:00.000-05:00

The second edition of the the contexts reader is officially o-u-t OUT with WW Norton -- signed, sealed, and delivered in time to raise our root beer glasses at the annual board meeting in Las Vegas.

The reader pulls together about 60 articles from the magazine, with minimal front-end bloviating by Uggen and Hartmann. Big thanks are due to Karl Bakeman of Norton and all 6,500 employees of Contexts Worldwide, especially Letta Page and Sweet Al Casey of the Scranton office, Jon Smajda from the Kansas City set-top box manufacturing facility, and Kia Heise, Hollie Nyseth, and our rippin' good graduate student board in Minneapolis.

trusting our stuff

2011-08-13T23:02:00.004-05:00

I spent some time in court today, taking the stand to share some research on voting and disenfranchisement. I've done this sort of thing a few times before, but courtrooms, sworn oaths, and cross-examinations are still a little scary to me -- more like heebie-jeebies scary than howling fantods scary -- but scary nonetheless. Whenever I get anxious, though, I try to "do as I say" in my capacity as advisor, editor, or chair.

When my students are anxious about presentating their work, I tell them what my little league coach said on his (frequent) trips to see me on the pitcher's mound: trust your stuff. I remind them about all the preparation, hard work, painstaking research, analysis, and careful writing they've done on the subject. If they're well-prepared, know what they're doing, and have good stuff to present, there's really little reason for anxiety. And, at that point, they can direct their energies into communicating effectively, rather than worrying about freaking out, melting down, or curling up in a fetal position before a room of stunned observers.

Social scientists are trained to be appropriately cautious in presenting our work to peers and to the public, but such caution shouldn't morph itself into learned helplessness or defeatism. As editors, we're often encouraging writers to trust their stuff -- "We actually know a lot about that right? You don't need to put "may," "perhaps," "preliminary," and "exploratory," in the concluding sentence. You've actually written some good stuff that's quite convincing on those very points, right?"

So, while it makes good sense to worry about "overselling" a particular study or finding, there's also a danger in "underselling" the real knowledge we've gained on a topic of importance. When I see social scientists overselling or overreaching, it is usually because they've gotten away from their stuff and started popping off about things they haven't researched or thought much about.

I was thinking of this after raising my right hand and striding across the courtroom to take the stand -- just stay on your research and trust your stuff. And it seemed to work out okay today -- I said "I don't know" when I lacked the information to answer a question responsibly, but I also made clear that we have learned some information relevant to the case at hand.

Learning how to trust your stuff comes in as handy in the courtroom as it does in the lecture hall or on the pitcher's mound. Of course, it won't eliminate all sources of anxiety. While 95 percent of my attention may have been devoted to responsibly communicating the research, about 5 percent was still pretty anxious. So, however much I may trust my research, I'm still mortified that my fly may be down when I feel a cool breeze on my way to the witness stand.

- cross-posted at The Editor's Desk and PubCrim