Shamus Khan

Talk Is Cheap

This article examines the methodological implications of the fact that what people say is often a poor predictor of what they do. We argue that many interview and survey researchers routinely conflate self-reports with behavior and assume a consistency between attitudes and action. We call this erroneous inference of situated behavior from verbal accounts the attitudinal fallacy. Though interviewing and ethnography are often lumped together as “qualitative methods,” by juxtaposing studies of “culture in action” based on verbal accounts with ethnographic investigations, we show that the latter routinely attempts to explain the “attitude–behavior problem” while the former regularly ignores it. Because meaning and action are collectively negotiated and context-dependent, we contend that self-reports of attitudes and behaviors are of limited value in explaining what people actually do because they are overly individualistic and abstracted from lived experience.

Less Theory. More Description.

Sociology must worry less about theoretical innovation and more about empirical description.

Reasons and Inclusion: The Foundation of Deliberation*

This article provides two empirical evaluations of deliberation. Given that scholars of deliberation often argue for its importance without empirical support, we first examine whether there is a “deliberative difference”; if actors engaging in deliberation arrive at different decisions than those who think on their own or “just talk.” As we find a general convergence within deliberation scholarship around reasons and inclusion, the second test examines whether these two specific mechanisms are central to deliberation. The first evaluation looks at outcomes within a laboratory setting; the second at videotapes of decision-making processes within this setting. Our results show two things. First, in terms of outcomes, deliberation differs from other forms of interaction. Second, reasons and inclusion are central to the deliberative process. The more reasons provided within each group, the more likely participants were to change their position; similarly, the more inclusive groups were, the more likely participants were to change their position. We conclude by arguing that more work needs to be done, both in evaluating the deliberative difference and in disaggregating deliberation and examining its central explanatory mechanisms.

Sexual assault incidents among college undergraduates: Prevalence and factors associated with risk

Sexual assault on college campuses is a public health issue. However varying research methodologies (e.g., different sexual assault definitions, measures, assessment timeframes) and low response rates hamper efforts to define the scope of the problem. To illuminate the complexity of campus sexual assault, we collected survey data from a large population-based random sample of undergraduate students from Columbia University and Barnard College in New York City, using evidence based methods to maximize response rates and sample representativeness, and behaviorally specific measures of sexual assault to accurately capture victimization rates. This paper focuses on student experiences of different types of sexual assault victimization, as well as sociodemographic, social, and risk environment correlates. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and logistic regression were used to estimate prevalences and test associations. Since college entry, 22% of students reported experiencing at least one incident of sexual assault (defined as sexualized touching, attempted penetration [oral, anal, vaginal, other], or completed penetration). Women and gender nonconforming students reported the highest rates (28% and 38%, respectively), although men also reported sexual assault (12.5%). Across types of assault and gender groups, incapacitation due to alcohol and drug use and/or other factors was the perpetration method reported most frequently (> 50%); physical force (particularly for completed penetration in women) and verbal coercion were also commonly reported. Factors associated with increased risk for sexual assault included non-heterosexual identity, difficulty paying for basic necessities, fraternity/sorority membership, participation in more casual sexual encounters (“hook ups”) vs. exclusive/monogamous or no sexual relationships, binge drinking, and experiencing sexual assault before college. High rates of re-victimization during college were reported across gender groups. Our study is consistent with prevalence findings previously reported. Variation in types of assault and methods of perpetration experienced across gender groups highlight the need to develop prevention strategies tailored to specific risk groups.

Toward an Understanding of the Relationship Between Accounts and Action

We appreciate the time and thought that Karen Cerulo, Paul DiMaggio, Doug Maynard, and Stephen Vaisey put into critiquing our article. It is the greatest honor to have one’s work seriously engaged, and this is exactly what our critics have done; for this, we thank them. Taken together, their articles shed greater light on a range of methodological issues that ought to concern every scholar interested in social action. They also help us identify a suite of research strategies that sociologists can use to avoid the attitudinal fallacy. Rather than pursue a point-by-point rebuttal to all four critics, we delve deeper into our argument by concentrating our response on three central points raised in this symposium: (1) While we acknowledge that there are occasions when reported attitudes are correlated with situated behavior, it is our contention that correlations are never high enough to presume equivalence (this presumption is the attitudinal fallacy) and that sociologists have only a rudimentary understanding of the conditions under which they can expect correspondence or divergence; (2) Similarly, sociologists routinely surmise that self-reported behavior is, more or less, an accurate stand-in for actual behavior, glossing the problematic of the fallibility of accounts—we call this the accounting fallacy; and (3) The attitudinal fallacy has been and continues to be a central problem in a variety of social science disciplines, and scholars have converged on the same core solution that we propose in

Talking Like a Generation: The ‘Documentary’ Meaning of Ethnicity for Aging Minority Britons

This article contributes to the ‘cognitive turn’ in the study of ethnicity and national identity, which focuses on how individuals construct ethnic identity categories pertinent to social cohesion. Using Mannheim as a methodological and analytical guide, we show how examining ethnicity as a relational enactment devoid of a priori categorisations allows situational identities that intersect with classical sociological concepts other than ethnicity – namely generation, class, and citizenship – to emerge within and across typical ethnic categorisations. We draw on an analysis of micro-level interactions among 40 aging ‘black and minority ethnics’ (BMEs) engaging in small-group discussions and a large deliberative assembly held in London in 2011.

“Humans Cannot Communicate”—Unravelling the Mental Knots of Niklas Luhmann

DiMaggio, P. J. and W. W. Powell. 1991. Introduction (pp. 1–38) in Powell, W. W. and P. J. DiMaggio (eds) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. DiMaggio, P. J. and W. W. Powell. 1991. ‘‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’’ (pp. 63–82) in Powell, W. W. and P. J. DiMaggio (eds) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge. London, UK: Vintage. Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Law, J. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London, UK: Routledge. Meyer, J. W. and B. Rowan. 1991. ‘‘Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony (pp. 41–62) in Powell, W. W. and P. J. DiMaggio (eds) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Powell, W. W. and P. J. DiMaggio, eds. 1991. The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Scott, W. R. and J. W. Meyer. 1991. ‘‘The Organization of Societal Sectors: Propositions and Early Evidence’’ (pp. 108–140) in Powell, W. W. and P. J. DiMaggio (eds) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

The Analytic Lenses of Ethnography

It is almost axiomatic that there are two contrasting theoretical approaches to ethnography: induction and deduction. However, regardless of whether ethnographers build theory from observations (induction) or use observations to test theory (deduction), they approach the field armed with one or more particular analytic lens that leads them to focus on a distinct thread of the social fabric. We outline the suite of analytic lenses that typify ethnography and identify eight ideal types. Though not mutually exclusive, they can be usefully grouped and contrasted accordingly: (1) the level of explanation: micro, organizational, and macro; (2) the subject of explanation: people and places and mechanisms; (3) the location of explanation: dispositions and situations; and (4) reflexivity. We specify the basic modes of analysis that typify each ideal type, trace their implications for how one selects units of observation, and demonstrate how these different ethnographic styles illuminate different dimensions of the social world.

Friends, strangers, and bystanders: Informal practices of sexual assault intervention

ABSTRACT Sexual assault is a part of many students’ experiences in higher education. In U.S. universities, one in four women and one in ten men report being sexually assaulted before graduation. Bystander training programmes have been shown to modestly reduce campus sexual assault. Like all public health interventions, however, they have unintended social consequences; this research examines how undergraduate men on one campus understand bystander interventions and how those understandings shape their actual practices. We draw on ethnographic data collected between August 2015 and January 2017 at Columbia University and Barnard College. Our findings show that university training and an earnest desire to be responsible lead many men to intervene in possible sexual assaults. However, students’ gendered methods target more socially vulnerable and socially distant men while protecting popular men and those to whom they are socially connected. Students’ actual bystander practices thus reproduce social hierarchies in which low prestige may or may not be connected to actual risks of sexual assault. These results suggest that understanding intragroup dynamics and social hierarchies is essential to assault prevention in universities and that students’ actions as bystanders may be effective at preventing assaults in some circumstances but may lead to new risks of sexual assault.

What elite theory should have learned, and can still learn, from W.E.B. DuBois

One of W.E.B. DuBois’most famous concepts, the “Talented Tenth”, is a theory of elites (1903). Yet elite scholars have completely ignored this contribution. In this brief essay, we outline what elite theory should have learned, and can still learn, from the work of DuBois. We begin by very briefly outlining DuBois’ theory of the Talented Tenth. We suggest some of its implications for elite theory. Finally, we highlight DuBois’ own criticism and abandonment of this early idea, and consider the implications of later DuBois upon how we might think about elites in society. DuBois was understandably sceptical of whites’ capacity to help or interest in helping “lift up” poorer blacks. Jim Crow segregation and White supremacy led him to suggest that improving the situation of black Americans would have to be done by blacks themselves. DuBois placed his faith in liberal education and social influence: in particular how through education, “knowledge of life and its wider meaning” could disseminate through a population. Colleges and universities could develop the exceptional 10 per cent of black Americans into leaders of the black masses and guide them to civilization. DuBois even suggested that his model had a kind of permanent truth; he claimed that never had “a nation on God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward... it will be from the top downward that culture filters”. The influence of cultured, educated blacks would not be limited to the cultural uplift of their fellow blacks; to Whites the Talented Tenth will “show the capability of Negro blood, the promise of Black men”. For DuBois, education was not relegated simply to schools, but as,