Positive Sociology

Are you in a slump? Have you ever been in one and found it difficult to shake? If so, let  me pass along this little gem. I found it today on Twitter.  It comes from Mookie Wilson, former Left Fielder for the New York Mets (and Toronto Blue Jays!).  Mookie was perhaps best known for his switch-hitting and for hitting the go-ahead game winning RBI in game 6 of the 1986 World Series (aka the hit that turned Bill Buckner into the most hated man in a Red Sox uniform). The Count also believes in Mookie! But, apart from being a stellar baseball player, Mookie is also apparently a wise sage: "When I'm in a slump, I comfort myself by saying if I believe in dinosaurs, then somewhere, they must be believing in me.  And if they believe in me, then I can believe in me.  Then I bust out." Self belief is a critical part of all successful pursuits and sometimes it's easy to lose faith during a slump. Maybe you're struggling with a revision of a paper, or you have a l...

Just finished reading "Ghettoside" by Jill Leovy, a longtime homicide reporter for the LA Times. Ghettoside tells the story of a young Black man gunned down by gang members in South Central LA. Statistically speaking, this happens all the time and nobody (save for the victim's families and community members) bats an eye. But, this time, the homicide victim is the son of a high-ranking police officer who lives in the 77th district, an area south of the 10 freeway that is divi ded up amongst warring Crip sets. Leovy does a great job of zooming into the years long investigation into this murder; she shows that homicide investigations are really stalled because police do not have the resources to really do their due diligence. In fact she argues that the justice system fails Black families in two ways. One is familiar: Black Americans are subject to a widening dragnet of police surveillance. The other is less familiar, but rings true: "Black Americans suffer fro...

What if academia was built on a culture of collaboration?  What if we tried to give each other truly constructive feedback?  What if we met people on their own terms and didn't try to impose our vision onto their work?  What if we started each review by highlighting what we liked about a piece? Don't be a Debbie Downer reviewer! Maybe it's just me, but these days it feels as if academic culture (and academic reviewing more specifically) has become overly negative.  It's as if we're all channeling our inner-Debbie Downers whenever papers come across our desks.  But, does it have to be this way? A couple years ago, my colleague--Erik Schneiderhan--wrote a great piece about the meanness of academic reviewing.  He makes some great points and argues that we could all stand to be a bit more gracious in our comments to authors.  He writes, "Try to build people up rather than knocking them down. It might make you feel good, and it will show the recip...