I said I was going to elaborate on why I admire Kozol, Park, Lareau, Pizzigoni, etc. Let me limit my elaboration to, each of them do their work passionately. Respectively, they: have a fierce sympathy for their subjects, the ability to inspire sociology students deeply and the courage to foresake his elite affiliations in order to teach in HBCUs in later life; the tenacity to redo an enormous qualitative study when the first approach of organizing and interpreting data wasn't good enough; and a devotion to rich lecturing that I can't help but envy already! I long to do, have these attitudes, accomplishments, traits. Let it be a healthy envy... motivation by admiration.
remember my chapter by chapter reflections to Jane Jacobs' book? Well, I want to do the same -- albeit more abridged (given the constraints of being in grad school now) -- with a book called "The Sociologically examined life." It is a great choice for me to read now, because I hope it will keep me loving this field. I have every confidence that I will stay in that condition (loving it), but any opportunity to fuel the fire will be seized happily!
The chapter I started in, after perusing the table of contents, had to do with understanding ourselves by understanding others, and the mirage of "personal" choices. First, the author, Michael Schwalbe, points out that blacks know more about whites than vice vera, or even than whites do about themselves, because they have had to examine them closely for their own survival. The ones (or group) with more power is thus the group with less self awareness. Interesting! The (a?) drawback of having power. Second, the author argues, there's no such thing as a choice we make that has no bearing, directly or indirectly, on others (perfect example: an unplanned pregnancy). I love this next point: "It is not always easy to see how this is so, and in some cases we may not want to see" (p. 52).
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