Everyday Sociology

A man pinches the butt of a woman on a sitcom set, and we hear the voice say “It’s been going on far too long. It’s not too much to ask of men that we don’t interrupt women and put forth our explanations in a posture of expertise (in a classic example on the subject, a man was telling the writer Rebecca Solnit about a very important book that she should read, unaware that she had written it). It fails to acknowledge and examine the damage men do when committing sexual harassment and assault, or when men don’t believe women’s experiences of sexual misconduct or look the other way when the misconduct occurs (a few examples of insightful writing on the subject are by Rebecca Traister and Roxane Gay). In thinking about the #MeToo movement, I’m reminded of Oprah Winfrey’s speech at the Golden Globes Awards in 2018, when, after telling the story of Recy Taylor, she said: She lived, as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men.

But sometimes a student’s social interactions in the classroom are difficult for both an instructor and fellow students to ignore, especially when it is clear that someone has trouble with social cues. It’s not that unusual for a student to go on a short tangent while speaking in class, but I have occasionally had students become fixated on ideas that are irrelevant to the topic at hand. Certainly the interviewee might ask some questions—perhaps about the position and the organization—but probably not questions about the interviewer’s qualifications or salary. Imagine if someone did not understand these typical interview dynamics or were unable to pick up on the social cues that the interviewer needed to ask most of the questions and was getting annoyed.

Using interview data, the authors explore the ways upwardly-mobile Americans experience a shift in their habitus due to their changing class position and to what extent this creates tension with family members and acquaintances who occupy different cultural and socioeconomic positions. Moreover, the authors explain that these three areas of change frequently spark tension between upwardly mobile individuals and their families, as upwardly mobile individuals and their families are often critical of each other due to the differences in their habitus. The key may lie with the uniqueness of upwardly mobile individuals featured in Curl, Lareau, and Wu’s work. While the upwardly mobile individuals of Curl, Lareau, and Wu’s study may experience tension with their families due to their newfound socio-economic identities, this same identity also grants them a unique opportunity to move between these groups.

It is incumbent on researchers to be open about their points of view, predictions, or assumptions before conducting research, and most importantly, to be open to the possibility that their assumptions or predictions are wrong. Researcher bias happens when people attempt to prove something without maintaining an open mind and then interpret any findings to support their assumptions even if their observations are contradictory. That certainly doesn’t mean that she can’t maintain an open mind on the subject; in fact, we all have likely (or will likely) lose someone we love, and thus all have experiences with death as survivors. During the survey construction process, a good researcher should reflect upon how much they know about an issue before composing questions and consider seeking advice from both colleagues and the sample population to talk about wording and issues that may be important to include.