I had an interesting conversation over dinner the other night with a fellow sociologist about this clip of Sudhir Venkatesh's appearance on the Colbert Report.
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Venkatesh describes himself as a "rogue" sociologist because he tried to go into the ghetto and survey people about what it's like to be black and poor, but they wouldn't answer his questions (go figure), so he decided to live with them for 6 years and find out for himself what they thought and how they lived. My friend says that he gives people the wrong idea about sociological work. I agree. He mentions the questions he asked in the survey and it's quite possibly the worst survey I've ever encountered. I'm a fan of ethnography, so I'm glad that he abandoned the quanty stuff for fieldwork, but how is that "rogue"?
Watch the clip, see for yourself, and let me know what you think. By the way, Venkatesh is coming to our sociology department in April.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
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