tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91942406973827665762024-03-13T10:53:11.667-04:00Soc'ing Out Loudmusings on sociology, music, religion, higher ed, and whatever else is going on in my lifeBrad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.comBlogger818125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-32145592144039494412023-09-01T10:34:00.001-04:002023-09-01T10:34:15.992-04:00New Original Music! (Dunes)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/dunes" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1920" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgafIryHBiXrsyoit016oQrnEvo8SQKwgh3PnYGjyEoR8XuSN8JBTViXb0FH-KMso8LHW_sZHBnm62YJRHlU0d9YI_d-OO7dmNpoxAHgtI-jmQymrYIRL-QCoQGotEGr6XW2G_OzaZowUG85ExB_olnjiKP5xDQHEqOL7cSslXLR-HX-N-s5Wz4S1ot5RQ/s320/Spotify%20Canvas%20-%20image%20(1920x1920)-.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"Blood on the ice and a body washed up on the shore"</p><p style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="color: #2288bb; font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/dunes">https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/dunes</a></span></span></p><p style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">Photo credit: </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif;">Storyblocks via <a href="https://www.littleredfern.com/" target="_blank">Little Red Fern</a></span></span></p><p><a href="https://www.americanethnographers.com/" style="color: #2288bb; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">https://www.americanethnographers.com/</a></p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-60013625032011074422023-01-30T12:56:00.002-05:002023-01-30T12:56:57.609-05:00Why I Left Academia<p>This past fall, I left academia. I walked away from a tenured position, and I took a job as a researcher with the Illinois State Board of Education. The reason is straightforward enough: my family all live in Southwest Michigan, and my wife's family all live in Central Indiana so taking a job in Chicago meant that we could live much, much closer to all of them. We've already enjoyed daytrips and lots of visitors.</p><p>I want to offer a few clarifications. First, <b>I didn't change careers because I had become disillusioned with higher education</b>. I loved being a professor, and I might do it again some day (if possible). Second, I didn't leave my job because of my employer--mostly. My colleagues at Georgia College were wonderful. I had several complaints about the local administrators, but generally, they were all doing their best. The University System of Georgia and the State of Georgia, on the other hand, suffered from many, many problems. I won't delineate them here, but suffice to say, the USG and the state are victims of their own politics. Still, this, by itself, was not enough to cause my exit. Finally, we didn't move because we didn't like Georgia. Milledgeville was a nice place to work, and we loved living in Athens. <b>We will miss Athen's culture and all of the friends that we made in Georgia.</b> Commuting nine hours a week wasn't sustainable, though, especially as the kids are getting older and more involved in extracurriculars. (Oh, the irony of moving to a major metropolitan area from a rural area to cut down on the commute!)</p><p>The transition was <i>very </i>difficult, but we are finally feeling settled and are happy. More updates to come.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-18872755882576596702022-12-28T15:44:00.001-05:002022-12-28T15:44:43.990-05:00A Speculative Solution to the Problem of Capital and Ownership<p><b>I have long advocated for employee control and ownership of the means of production.</b> This was really at the core of what Marx imagined communism would be, even though he never really fleshed it out. (See the New Belgium Brewing Company, Publix, Taylor Guitars, and the W. W. Norton & Company for contemporary variations on such a model.) A practical problem, though, when aiming toward this end is, How do we encourage economic development while turning companies over to the ones who actually create value through their labor? In capitalism, investment happens because individuals with wealth see an opportunity to expand their wealth, but how would this work for laborers who have very little wealth and often only their own labor to sell?</p><p>One could imagine government stepping in as the financer in such a new system, lending money to a collection of workers, but this seems politically untenable, at least in the short term. I think copyright law might offer a surprising solution. The Founders established copyright in the US as a compromise to encourage and reward creativity. An author would have a set time time to profit from their creation after which the work would be turned over to the public domain. 28 years, they surmised, should be more than enough time for authors to profit from their work, and then the public would be able to elaborate from there. The relatively short copyright period encourages creativity (with the promise of a brief monopoly) while the eternal public-domain period discourages stagnation (with the promise of collective ownership). <b>What if, like copyright, we limited the time that those who gave the startup capital for a business were allowed to profit from their investment after which the business would be turned over to its workers?</b> It wouldn't even necesarily need to happen all at once. I could imagine a system that gradually shifted the profits and control from owners to workers. I think it's worth considering.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-82346647345615242912022-12-07T11:08:00.000-05:002022-12-07T11:08:22.980-05:00Parents' Rights Is Lazy Parenting<p>I was listening this morning to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/podcasts/the-daily/book-ban-high-school-libraries.html" target="_blank">The Daily</a>, and the lead story was about school librarians and book-banning. It got me thinking about the dominant rhetorical strategy being employed by those who want to <strike>be Nazis </strike>do censorship. Set aside for a minute any human concerns for the marginalized folks whose existence and representation tend to be at the center of this culture war battlefield. Let's take the right-wing, wouldbe censors at their word and assume this is actually about "parents' rights." I am not the first to point this out, but an obvious issue is that Parents' Rights™ actively negates the rights of the majority of parents who don't wish controversial books to be removed from their kids' school libraries. It is more accurately a debate about whether one set of parents has the right to impose their worldview on other parents.</p><p>That led me to this conclusion: at its core <b>"Parents' Rights" parents are lazy parents</b>. In effect, they are asking the state* to do their parenting for them. If a parent doesn't want their kid reading <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_Boy_(Evison_novel)" target="_blank">Lawn Boy</a>, for example, it is the parent's job to inform their child that they're not allowed to read the novel and then, if necessary, to police the kid's reading. Instead, under the guise of their "rights," these parents are arguing that the schools should restrict access from <i>all </i>students simply because they don't want <i>their</i> child to have access. They apprently can't or won't suprevise their own child and ask the state to do so on their behalf. They can't control their own household so they ask the state to control their entire community. If I remember correctly, <b>folks on the right had a term for situations where the government acts in an overprotective manner, curtailing individual choices: the nanny state</b>. I guess these kinds of criticisms only apply to the state when one disagrees with the state's actions, huh?</p><p>--</p><p>* - Public schools are special-purpose government entities.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-33762352993144546832022-06-10T12:29:00.003-04:002022-06-10T12:30:13.833-04:00New Original Music! (Cigarette Days)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhup-hkHD1EZ83lTXYkc_z9zCGKGphFMPOu4MOkFkodC6U7bWlalbGEA-a5vwebQZGnK6NBH2WZ8Ex3X9F5GIdo3i9Ro3GWoy62YOCojBHYEc67Zkx39ihCGxDJhlFrs9MoCRNLMP4HsZLJGqzV98I-RzSTl27g8zbTSAWrcszrupfe_QadMt1xylMY/s4687/Publication3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4687" data-original-width="4687" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhup-hkHD1EZ83lTXYkc_z9zCGKGphFMPOu4MOkFkodC6U7bWlalbGEA-a5vwebQZGnK6NBH2WZ8Ex3X9F5GIdo3i9Ro3GWoy62YOCojBHYEc67Zkx39ihCGxDJhlFrs9MoCRNLMP4HsZLJGqzV98I-RzSTl27g8zbTSAWrcszrupfe_QadMt1xylMY/s320/Publication3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>"We rushed forward with abandon in urgency…."</p><p><a href="https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/cigarette-days">https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/cigarette-days</a></p><p>Photo credit: Shari Carr</p><p><a href="https://www.americanethnographers.com/">https://www.americanethnographers.com/</a></p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-6450141808534814162022-04-05T14:12:00.001-04:002022-04-05T14:12:08.341-04:00Lecture vs. Discussion and Its Consequences<p>I employ a number of different pedagogical methods in the classroom. It varies between courses and lessons. I get the impression, though, that I do a lot more traditional lecturing of the "sage on a stage" variety than my colleagues. I often do this because <b>I worry that classroom discussion can encourage students to feel entitled to uninformed opinions</b>. You don't get to have an opinion on moral/ethical issues like whether racism is bad or on matters of social fact like the poverty rate. <b>Lecture encourages students to foster a critical respect for experts.</b> This isn't to say that there is no place for discussion in my classroom, just that I am careful with how it is used.</p><p>Imagine that the world has been one big epidemiology classroom for the past two years. How much listening have students done to the experts? How many students have opted to debate those experts? What have been the consequences?</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-3220225779981272292022-04-05T13:58:00.002-04:002022-04-05T13:58:19.668-04:00The Bending Arc of the Moral Universe<p>I'm of the opinion that the story of history has been toward progress and that we can reasonably predict that progress to continue into the future. Critics will point out setbacks (e.g. recent increases in violence toward Asian Americans or increases in crime rates). Could these represent reversals? Sure, but <b>the historical data are noisy, and we regularly witness short-term blips revert to the trend line of the historic mean</b>. Short-term variability does not negate the long-term trend. </p><p>When I say it's a safe bet that things will continue to get better, I am not saying that will happen on its own without effort. Somehow people think that the work that goes into making progress happen is outside of my prediction. It's not. <b>I'm predicting that people will continue to put in the work because that is entangled in the historic data as well.</b> A lack of complacency is a part of my model. </p><p>I could be wrong. Social science is probabilistic.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-54898348665765041942021-12-21T13:46:00.003-05:002021-12-21T13:46:12.804-05:00Review of The New Beatles Documentary<p>My wife and I finally finished watching The Beatles documentary, <i>Get Back</i>, a couple days ago. It took us seven or so sittings to get through it. (Kids, amirite?!) Here are a few relatively disjointed thoughts.</p><p><u>The Music</u></p><p>I was struck by how much of the footage is just a bunch of blokes dicking around. It seemed unprofessional, especially given their deadline(s). I've played in more than six bands since I was a teenager, and none of them, no matter how unserious, had rehearsals--let alone recording sessions--that were as unstructured this. I reminded myself, though, just how important play is to creativity. All work and no play makes Homer something something. It really does all come together on the rooftop.</p><p>I've seen many online making note of how well The Beatles seem to anticipate each other as they jam. Without being condescending, it really just strikes me as what it is to be a musician and how it is to be in a band. It's not particular to The Beatles. When John plays a I chord followed by a IV chord, it's not magic that Paul and George know that the next chord is almost certainly the V. That's just a good guess based on the most basic of applied music theory. I understand that for the uninitiated this can seem remarkable, but if anything, it's surprising that they aren't even better than they are.</p><p>I had a preconceived notion about this, which I would have been happy to have been wrong about, but none of The Beatles are great musicians. (They were really lucky to have Preston, who is an <i>amazing </i>musician, sitting in.) I was shocked at George's lack of chops, in particular. He talked at one point about how Clapton and others play virtuosically and laments that he can't do it. To be clear, though, The Beatles weren't <i>bad</i> musicians. They, all four, are undeniably great songwriters with unique voices (metaphorically). </p><p>To me, Paul is better at piano than bass. (Don't get me started on that awful muted Hofner bass tone! Ugh.) It was interesting to see John and George playing the Fender Bass VI. It's somewhat confusing why they wouldn't just play a traditional four-string, though.</p><p><u>Context</u></p><p>At times, I found myself impatient, noting that I wouldn't watch this kind of boring shit for anyone. Why The Beatles? Most of us don't have the patience to watch paint dry--unless it were really interesting paint laid down for the Mona Lisa by da Vinci or something, which I think is what we see here. Peter Jackson is a great filmmaker, but I'm not sure if he did an awesome job with low quality stuff or a lackluster job by not having edited down much further.</p><p><u>The Constabulary</u></p><p>It was remarkable how passive the police were! Especially from the perspective of an American in 2021, the police response was just so subdued. We are so accustomed here today to seeing heavily armed and aggressive responses from law enforcement, this seemed almost comically understated. </p><p>It's also worth noting that the main complaint from the responding constible was the disruption to local businesses, because, you know, capitalism always trumps art.</p><p><u>The Studio</u></p><p>It's incredible to see the advances in audio technology over the past fifty-some years. Most of the microphones were unrecognizable. There was a surprising lack of audio isolation between the instruments, amps, and vocals. Indeed, they were even relying on a PA system, which would be utterly unthinkable today! The norm, even if tracking live, would typically be to have each musician in his own space, either in an isolation booth or surrounded by gobos, and for each person to wear headphones for monitoring.</p><p>There is also a humorous moment when the legendary Glyn Johns recounts how he asked EMI for four monitor speakers for the control room, and they said, "Why? You only have two ears." They weren't wrong.</p><p><u>The Interpersonal</u></p><p>A lot is also made of how authoritative Paul is and how passive George and Ringo are. Indeed, George seems increasingly uncomfortable in that passivity to the point of temporarily quitting the group. Again, this is just the way bands work. It is a near-impossibility for bands to be completely egalitarian and equitable. Someone has to have an overarching vision and the boldness to impose it and others have to embrace a supporting role. Most bands, including The Beatles, break up because of disagreements about how to best differentiate creative tasks.</p><p>As a side note, Paul essentially admits in front of Linda that he'd choose The Beatles over her when he speculates that John would choose Yoko over them. Much has already been said about Yoko and her supposed role in The Beatles' breakup. Speculatively, it didn't always appear to me that Yoko's presence was voluntary, as if John was forcing her to be there.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-29244306700429170662021-12-08T09:50:00.000-05:002021-12-08T09:50:16.580-05:00Presidential Listening Tour<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our new president recently did the typical "listening tour." Of course, the scheduled times were predictably inconvenient and brief. There was, however, an online submission process. I'm posting my letter to the president below.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">--</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dear President Cox,</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-abd6e9f0-7fff-6a87-6cc6-e13f96b965a4"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am sorry that I haven’t yet had a chance to meet you and that I was not available to attend our designated listening session. I did, however, want to take a moment to share some broad concerns.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The past several years, especially the last two, have been difficult for everyone on campus and in our community. As faculty, it has been difficult not to feel exploited and demoralized. The Regents, USG, and, at times, even GC administrators have signaled their disregard for us. Here are just a few examples of the injustices we’ve endured: </span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being forced to abide firearms in our classrooms</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the [unilateral] reimagining of a more limited, advisory role for the University Senate</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being forced, under threat of termination, to do in-person instruction during a pandemic</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being forced to answer to a state legislator who demanded to know and compiled a list of which of our programs and classes teach Critical Race Theory</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">repeatedly not receiving merit pay</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">having tenure gutted</span></p></li></ul><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At no point has anyone intervened on the behalf of faculty (let alone staff, students, or common sense) in these matters. No one in a position of authority stood up and said, This is wrong. I would respectfully encourage you to take immediate, ongoing, and active steps to repair this damage, and I humbly ask you to prepare to take action on our behalf when required in the future. There is much trust to be rebuilt.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sincerely,</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brad Koch</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Associate Professor of Sociology</span></p></span>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-69898800040346019982021-11-12T10:24:00.002-05:002021-11-12T10:24:21.571-05:00New Original Music! (Sisyphus Went on Strike)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="]" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1005" data-original-width="1011" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoymfklQ7znUzq4ntRlYVotF-mVAbsKMR_vBC5VjMTSQDOL8PdK1giZlmjCBkBBL_XCvkXZUUa1lPq3HWHymLW6lnzc8BPwQEAnH5wWv8KIGNGaOoHSVG37BZDgN1JP65aqDMDjYZKRpE/s320/swos.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>"...existentialist anthem and a pro-labor hymn."</p><div><a href="https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/sisyphus-went-on-strike">https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/sisyphus-went-on-strike</a></div><p>Original artwork by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/crosseyedraven/">https://www.instagram.com/crosseyedraven/</a></p><p><a href="https://www.americanethnographers.com/">https://www.americanethnographers.com/</a></p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-27816280164909034132021-10-20T10:49:00.000-04:002021-10-20T10:49:09.758-04:00A Neo-Decalogue<p>I've been thinking a lot over the pandemic about how I come to such different conclusions about the world than others. Why do I wear a mask or get vaccinated when others react so strongly--even violently--against such practices? One explanation I entertain is that I have a different set of base assumptions about the world than those folks. I sat down and did the exercise of writing out those starting principles. This is what I came up with:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Be compassionate. </li><li>People are essentially good. </li><li>People have inherent dignity that can be neither earned nor forfeited.</li><ol><li>Honor is a vice. </li></ol><li>We must love ourselves, our neighbors, the stranger, and even our enemies.</li><ol><li>In doing so, we love what many have come to call God.</li></ol><li>Love is an action, not a sentiment.</li><li>If I fail to help someone in need, it is a statement against my character; if one takes advantage of my willingness to help, it is a statement against their character. </li><li>Any advantaged ascribed status or identity that causes fear or division is a vice. </li><ol><li>These include nationality, race, political party, and family.</li></ol><li>All else being equal, the interests of the collective supersede those of the individual.</li><ol><li>Indeed, the interests of the individual are best served through the collective. </li></ol><li>Social institutions exist for people, not the inverse. </li><li>All choice and responsibility exist within the constraints of a context. </li></ol><div>I'm not sure these are inclusive, but they seem like they encompass the gist of what I was thinking. </div><p></p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-49954219841737196672021-09-05T10:40:00.000-04:002021-09-05T10:40:33.713-04:00The Rumors of Their Christianity Are Greatly Exaggerated<p>I find myself full of rage these days. There are lots of reasons for that, but a prominent one is this: <b>the people in my family who most vociferously identify as "Christian" are the only people in my family who refuse to be vaccinated</b>. A big part of this, of course, is the same old, tired story of Evangelical hegemony. I am a Christian, too!* Evangelicals have been quite successful at convincing themselves and others that Christianity is synonymous with Evangelical and that Christianity is monolithic. It doesn't matter that this is demonstrably false both in the past and today. (There is a distinct irony embedded in this as Evangelicals have unwittingly thwarted their own global proselytization campaign. <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-christian-right-is-helping-drive-liberals-away-from-religion/" target="_blank">Since people have increasingly associated being religious with conservative theology and politics which they find unpalatable, people are simply abandoning religion.</a> In other words, people are saying, "If <i>that's</i> what it is to be religious, count me out.") The whole thing is infuriating on many levels.<br /></p><p>In closing, if you don't love your neighbor enough to get vaccinated, maybe consider that you're not actually Christian.</p><p><br /></p><p>--</p><p>* - I attend far more consistently than any of them, have dedicated most of my education and scholarship to religion, and actually try to live out that gospel message of "love they God/self/neighbor/enemy," but as a mainliner, they fail to recognize me as Christian. In fact, they have at times evangelized to me as if I were ignorant to Christianity. I digress, though.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-32454508395017443002021-07-10T14:21:00.000-04:002021-07-10T14:21:10.739-04:00Public Municipal Journalism, a Proposal<p>I've been thinking about the role of news media in the growing partisan divide and social instability in the US over the last few years. I think it would be an oversimplification to claim that news media have caused these issues, but it seems clear that they at best failed to moderate them and at worse amplified them. Part of the issue undoubtedly is that journalism in the US is predominantly for-profit. We've had a public discussion recently about the problems that arise when we allow profit motives into other essential institutions, like education and healthcare, but we haven't yet addressed the same concerns with the press. The à la carte nature of journalism in the US has fragmented the national narrative to the point of near-collapse, and that fragmentation is largely the result of the capitalistic pursuit of niche markets, selling a branded story that resonates with a particular worldview or identity. This has been particularly disastrous for local newspapers. How might we correct this?</p><p>I'm reminded of the idea of the fourth estate. <b>What if we reimagined a free press as being free not only of governmental control but also of capitalist manipulation?</b> I can imagine news organizations that are chartered with very specific operating constraints. What if news media were cooperative firms, owned and controlled jointly by the journalists-workers and the communities they serve? What if they were funded by local millage or bond? What if journalists finally abandoned editorials and the op-ed page?</p><p>Across Western Europe, public news media are <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/08/western-europe-public-news-media-widely-used-and-trusted/" target="_blank">widely used</a> and trusted sources of news. Most other advanced, industrialized nations have public journalism which serves as the preferred news source, is trusted more than private news media, and is trusted far more than distrusted. While there are populist and ideological divides, the divides are generally far smaller than you'd guess and do not reverse trust (Spain being an outlier). Regardless, we can certainly do better in the US.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-90076068916511308352021-07-09T11:09:00.003-04:002021-07-09T11:11:35.028-04:00Zero- and Non-Zero-Sum Advantage<p>I've been thinking a lot recently about "privilege," what I agree is more sociologically termed advantage.* Specifically, I've been wrestling with the practice of publicly forcing people to acknowledge their advantage. I think this crescendoed last summer during the BLM protests. On whole, I think that these kinds of correctives are good. Part of advantage, after all, is not having to recognize that advantage so making advantaged folks see and address their advantage opens the opportunity for social change.</p><p>Along the way, however, I think <b>there has been a shift from making people aware of their advantage to shaming and stigmatizing that advantage</b>. As an example, imagine a white woman posting a picture of the new home she just purchased to Facebook and her friends commenting on the post that she is blindly demonstrating her privilege. It is a fine line between rightly problematizing her ignorance of her privilege and problematizing the purchase of a new home per se. I propose that it is better to think of two kinds of advantage/privilege, zero-sum and non-zero-sum.</p><p><b>By zero-sum advantage, I mean those kinds of situations in which one benefits at the expense of another. </b>Generational wealth is a good example of this since, under capitalism, one's economic fortunes are tied to the current and/or historic exploitation of others. Because of this, corrective actions are necessary beyond just consciousness-raising (e.g. reparations or redistributive taxation). My advantaged economic standing is systemically linked to the standing of others, which requires the reduction of my advantage.</p><p><b>By non-zero-sum advantage, I mean those kinds of situations in which one's benefit is not directly linked to another's disadvantage but is instead a comparative or relative advantage.</b> Interactions with the police are a good example of this since the fact that whites are less likely to have negative interactions with the police does not explain the increased propensity for police to target (intentionally or otherwise) blacks. The disprivilege of BIPOC folks to be disproportionately mistreated by the police does not mean that whites should be exposed to <i>more</i> mistreatment; instead, the "advantage" of being treated fairly and humanely should be expanded to the disadvantaged.</p><p><b>In other words, non-zero-sum advantages should be <i>extended</i> to those who are disadvantaged, while zero-sum advantages should be <i>removed </i>from those who are advantaged.</b> I think this distinction will be helpful in both the public discourse about advantage/privilege as well in its treatment.</p><p>--</p><p>* - See <a href="https://www.socingoutloud.com/2020/12/student-evaluations-equity-and-advantage.html" target="_blank">here</a> for a note about this.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-69426052569813836212021-04-04T13:23:00.009-04:002021-04-04T13:28:10.341-04:00Easter Exercise: Theories of Atonement<p> I stumbled on <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@goodshepherdabq/video/6944105618051452166" target="_blank">this video</a> in my For You page on TikTok:</p><p><br /></p><blockquote cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@goodshepherdabq/video/6944105618051452166" class="tiktok-embed" data-video-id="6944105618051452166" style="max-width: 605px; min-width: 325px;"> <section> <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@goodshepherdabq" target="_blank" title="@goodshepherdabq">@goodshepherdabq</a> <p>Karen learns a thing! Inspired by Robert Myallis’ peeps atonement videos (YouTube). 😊<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/progressiveclergy" target="_blank" title="progressiveclergy">#progressiveclergy</a> <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/progressivechristian" target="_blank" title="progressivechristian">#progressivechristian</a></p> <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/Hip-Hop-Story-Instrumental-6817704077477021698" target="_blank" title="♬ Hip Hop Story (Instrumental) - Swagg B & PBL">♬ Hip Hop Story (Instrumental) - Swagg B & PBL</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async="" src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script><p>It got me thinking, and appropriately enough, I spent Easter morning going down a bit of a <strike>bunny </strike>rabbit hole on the internet. I'm putting this down here mostly for my own reference later.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Ransom Theory</li><ul><li>2nd century</li><li>Early Church Fathers</li><li>God warned you to stay away from the edge of the pier, but you didn't listen and fell into the water. The lifeguards will gladly save you, but they require payment, and you won't come close to earning enough money—even over your entire lifetime—to pay them for their services so Jesus steps in to pay the bill for you.</li><li>Is God not big enough and loving enough to forgo the ransom? If God is omnipotent, who is receiving payment?</li></ul><li>Satisfaction/Substitution Theory</li><ul><li>11th century</li><li>Anselm</li><li>God told you to stay away from the edge of the pier, but you didn't listen and fell into the water. God's honor has been besmirched by your disobedience. You are incapable of restoring God's honor as a meer mortal so Jesus takes your place because, you know, someone has to drown.</li><li>Why is god so petty?</li></ul><li>Penal Substitutionary Theory</li><ul><li>16th century</li><li>Reformers</li><li>God made a law that you have to stay away from the edge of the pier, but you didn't follow the law and fell into the water. God is just, and justice demands that someone must be punished. Instead of punishing you by leaving you to drown in the water, Jesus takes your place.</li><li>Is God not big enough and loving enough to forgive a crime? "Justice" seems to be bigger than God.</li></ul><li>Moral Influence/Example Theories</li><ul><li>unclear (arguably 2nd century but goes in and out of style)</li><li>Social Gospel folk et al.</li><li>You find yourself floundering in the water, quickly becoming exhausted. Jesus jumps in the water and saves you from drowning, but in rescuing you, Jesus himself succumbs to the waves.*</li><ul><li>Jesus' death is an example of perfect, sacrificial love for all of humanity to which we should aspire.</li></ul><li>Is this atonement at all? Do people earn their own salvation by doing good works?</li></ul><li><i>Christus Victor</i></li><ul><li>1931</li><li>Aulén</li><li>Jesus will lead a cosmic war at sea to make it impossible for anyone to ever fall into the water again.</li><li>If God is omnipotent, who would he even fight with?</li></ul></ul><div>--</div><div><br /></div><div>* - I borrowed this from <a href="https://andrewspringer.medium.com/five-views-on-the-atonement-of-christ-d71dddca9b84" target="_blank">Andrew Springer</a> and forced all the other metaphors based on his. Here is the original:</div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Imagine sitting safely on a pier, in a deck chair, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a man flings himself into the ocean and drowns. You later learn he did this because he loved you. You would probably think the man was a lunatic. But if, on the other hand, you yourself were drowning in the ocean, and a man came out to save you, succeeds, but drowns himself, you would understand, yes this is love.</span></div></blockquote><p></p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-59362304180331495062021-02-12T10:42:00.002-05:002021-02-12T10:42:10.780-05:00New Original Music! (Take off Your Clothes)<p><a href="https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/take-off-your-clothes" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="624" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUtBMbKLZ8XmmRYQvrZvPWHwG5txXAF8TuoTOPCtEccgkfM5aVO1g7mxTGZkFBlf9k4T7Xg99-lCKC4Zory7FdiQ3iVPa1I3ojQ_2QzRNaH60R1T1Ai_WEoloVsBGBI89Hb7xezKYrtTo/s320/ToYC.png" /></a></p><p>"Titillating memories of summers swimming in Lake Michigan mixed with vaguely-masochistic fantasy."</p><p><a href="https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/take-off-your-clothes">https://songwhip.com/americanethnographers/take-off-your-clothes</a></p><p>Original artwork by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/crosseyedraven/">https://www.instagram.com/crosseyedraven/</a></p><p><a href="https://www.americanethnographers.com/" target="_blank">https://www.americanethnographers.com/</a></p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-19569595671938752732020-12-10T12:34:00.007-05:002020-12-10T13:34:07.307-05:00Student Evaluations, Equity, and Advantage<p>I posted the following tweet this morning: </p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">This is the time of year when I ignore student evaluations because the research shows that they disadvantage my colleagues who aren't like me (i.e. straight, white, cisgender, man, etc.) and they harm my mental health. It's also a good time to remind administrators of it, too.</p>— Brad Koch 🎶🚲📚🍻 (@BradleyAKoch) <a href="https://twitter.com/BradleyAKoch/status/1337051357950451716?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><div>There is an unfortunate irony to my tweet in that I am, to some extent, able to ignore my evaluations because of the advantages conveyed by my identities and tenure. Literally everything about my identity grants me structural advantage (a/k/a privilege*) relative to those with identities different from mine, and there is no way for me to opt-out of it or to compartmentalize it. On the one hand, this is unfair to me in that I will never know to what extent my successes were earned or were a product of those advantages. (Cue world's smallest violin.) More troublingly, it is unjust to those who are not like me who are less likely to have successes in the first place.</div><div><br /></div>I followed up with a comment linking to the press release (9/9/19) from the American Sociological Association (ASA) on <a href="https://www.asanet.org/press-center/press-releases/reconsidering-student-evaluations-teaching" target="_blank">Reconsidering Student Evaluations of Teaching</a>. I, however, don't fully agree with the ASA recommendations. Confusingly, they argue that "SETs [student evaluations of teaching] are weakly related to other measures of teaching effectiveness and student learning" and that:<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span>A scholarly consensus has emerged that using SETs as the primary measure of teaching </span>effectiveness in faculty review processes can systematically disadvantage faculty from marginalized groups. This can be especially consequential for contingent faculty for whom a small difference in average scores can mean the difference between contract renewal and</span></div></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">dismissal.</span></div></div></blockquote><div><div>but then continue nonetheless with recommendations on how to include SETs as "part of a holistic assessment." If the evidence suggests that SETs are inherently inequitable, they should have <i>no</i> role in the faculty evaluation process. </div><div><br /></div><div>Imagine forcing students to wear glasses in certain professors' classes that make everything look blurry and unfocused and then asking them at the end of the semester to accurately describe the professor's physical attributes. We should not be surprised when the students are unable to give anything approaching an accurate description. Now imagine arguing that if only we asked the right questions, we would be able to suss out a fair characterization. This would be ridiculous! One cannot reconstruct data from a concept that was obstructed from the data in the first place. No, the only way to accurately measure the professor's physical attributes would be to remove the glasses from the students' eyes before taking the classes.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Likewise, I don't see a way that we can reconstruct an accurate measure of teaching effectiveness that is hopelessly clouded by culturally imposed implicit biases short of eliminating the source of these biases before students enter the classroom, which, while a worthy project, is one beyond the scope of colleges and universities working alone.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The non-expert, naive opinions of students are of little utility, regardless, but that's best saved for another blog post.</div><div><br /></div><div>--</div><p></p><p>I prefer not to use the term "privilege." For a good explanation of why, see <a href="https://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2018/03/its-about-power-not-privilege.html" target="_blank">Kaufman and Schoepflin's discussion</a> on the topic</p></div>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-35129943760409720142020-11-29T09:36:00.001-05:002020-11-30T08:24:05.703-05:00Scared off the Road<p>I'm a cyclist. I've been riding a road bike for about 20 years, now. I do it mostly to stay physically fit, but it also definitely <b>helps with my mental health</b>. I like riding alone out on rural roads. In the same way that many people have insights and find inspiration in the shower, I can easily turn off my prefrontal constraints and let my mind wander in the saddle. It's like <b>a productive meditative state</b>. I've had breakthroughs on the bike with songwriting and with sociological research projects. Mostly, though, it's just a way to (dis)engage in a relatively undemanding, repetitive mental/physical practice that unclutters my mind. (It turns out cranking pedals and maintaining balance is a lot like washing one's hair but lasts far longer.)</p><p>A problem, though, that I've encountered from almost the first time I went on a bike ride as an adult is that motorists regularly endanger and disrespect cyclists. While cycling is pretty safe, it can feel harrowing. What is more troubling, though, is the aftermath of those troubling encounters. <b>When my life is threatened, I am understandably angered.</b> Think about the times when you've been driving your car and another motorist does something stupid that could have killed you or others. You likely got mad. This is not "road rage"; it's a justifiable and natural reaction. It's only amplified when I'm on my bike because while car accidents are dangerous, as a cyclist, I have about 10% of the mass of a typical car and am protected by a helmet, not crumple zones, airbags, a seatbelt, etc. Add heightened adrenaline levels from the exercise and stress, and these emotions are exagerated. You'll forgive me for being a bit enraged when someone chooses to risk my wellbeing because they're in a hurry. When I'm behind the wheel of a car and some idiot cuts me off, I can use the horn to alert them to their mistake. There is no such mechanism on my bike so I end up yelling and, sometimes, using my middle finger.</p><p><b>The double-whammy of having my life endangered and then feeling irrationally guilty for the rest of my day from expressing righteous anger erases the mental and emotional benefits of cycling for me.</b> I was stubborn enough in my youth to push past this, but <b>now, I have changed my habits</b>. For the last month or so, I have been riding nine laps around my 1.74-mile neighborhood loop instead of doing my typical 17-mile ride through the local countryside. <b>It's not the same.</b> It's better than feeling bad about getting mad, but it's still sad.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-70038820646146568822020-11-25T10:25:00.009-05:002020-11-25T10:54:51.978-05:00COVID on Campus, a Fall 2020 RetrospectiveThe University System of Georgia (USG) forced faculty, staff, and students into in-person classroom instruction for the Fall 2020 semester. To my knowledge, there has been no indication that any high-level campus administrators at Georgia College (GC) raised any concerns with the Chancellor, Board of Regents, or anyone else at the USG over the wisdom of this initiative. Over the semester, I have <a href="https://www.bradleykoch.com/covid19" target="_blank">regularly updated data visualization</a> of my campus's COVID-19 cases. In-person classes ended yesterday (11/24). Below are those charts:<div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioiQJ1xhkHS0ZOSWX4ZLTQAC33ci6Fvo0rTSBGlhfHva2Midhuhq5klldiTTOs7oJHkJ5rLGENJLlHB39NwVDNDKTpkG7DRqm8I3L6JZxFJvVoc64qe_UvghGCHRIUSfqZGwQQVRUmXEE/s960/GC+Confirmed+COVID-19+Cases.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioiQJ1xhkHS0ZOSWX4ZLTQAC33ci6Fvo0rTSBGlhfHva2Midhuhq5klldiTTOs7oJHkJ5rLGENJLlHB39NwVDNDKTpkG7DRqm8I3L6JZxFJvVoc64qe_UvghGCHRIUSfqZGwQQVRUmXEE/w640-h360/GC+Confirmed+COVID-19+Cases.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAw6l99dz_b9DglBA6qwzILoAZFiAllLaxeuOJ_XuX98ihWW3K6B53G7-KWMOBmZmoXVdrSnX6sPlkDY-exYiBwyio_Ln5Z1d4F4sir_FTZX5MHq1eQZcvK1VWqe10U7d6mMvK8V6Mak/s960/GC+Confirmed+COVID-19+Cases+%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAw6l99dz_b9DglBA6qwzILoAZFiAllLaxeuOJ_XuX98ihWW3K6B53G7-KWMOBmZmoXVdrSnX6sPlkDY-exYiBwyio_Ln5Z1d4F4sir_FTZX5MHq1eQZcvK1VWqe10U7d6mMvK8V6Mak/w640-h360/GC+Confirmed+COVID-19+Cases+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>Here are some facts, findings, and dates:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>More than 12% of students (727) taking at least one in-person course disclosed a positive COVID test during the semester.</b></li><li>36 employees disclosed a positive COVID test during the semester.</li><li>The peak reporting of new cases occurred on 8/24 with 79 new cases, 16 days after students moved into on-campus housing and 12 days after classes began.</li><li><b>The peak of active infections (i.e. total cases 14-day window) occurred on 8/31 with 539 cases (9% of students [536] taking at least one in-person course), 23 days after students moved into on-campus housing and 19 days after classes began.</b></li><li>GC president, Steve Dorman, threatened students with suspension over non-compliance with university policy on 8/25.</li><li>GC Student Life announced the creation of a COVID CARE Response Team on 9/8.</li><li>GC Student Health Services began offering no-cost COVID-19 saliva tests on 9/11.</li><li>USG chancellor, Steve Wrigley, <a href="https://georgiarecorder.com/2020/09/16/amid-campus-covid-spread-georgia-colleges-to-push-for-in-person-class/" target="_blank">announced</a> that we will "stay the course" on 9/15.</li><li>Under <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/nyregion/oneonta-college-coronavirus-president.html" target="_blank">remarkably similar circumstances</a> (i.e. 700 student cases on ~4000-student campus), SUNY-Oneonta president, Barbara Jean Morris, resigned on 10/15.</li></ul><div><div>--</div><div><br /></div><div>A few notes:</div><div><ul><li>The data are primarily confirmed test results volunteered by students and employees, which means the actual numbers are certainly higher than reported.</li><li>At no point before or during the semester did the administration conduct any systematic contact tracing.</li><li>The administration neither required nor offered testing of students or employees before returning to campus for the semester.</li><li>5859 students took at least one in-person course during the semester.</li><li>The administration published "employee" test results but did not distinguish between faculty and staff, and I have been unable to find a total count of current employees on campus.</li></ul></div></div></div></div>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-32852952601171133462020-11-23T14:01:00.002-05:002020-11-23T14:01:48.334-05:00Rethinking Honors Education<p>My small, public liberal arts campus just transformed an honors <i>program </i>into an honors <i>college</i>, helped along with a very healthy donation from a wealthy emeritus professor. Over the years, I have taught a handful of honors sections of a frosh-level course. To be honest, they have been among the most rewarding teaching experiences of my career. They were what I imagined teaching at a liberal arts college would be. The students were enthusiastic. They wanted to be in the room. They interacted with me and with each other. They welcomed challenge--at least as much we humans can actually welcome that kind of thing. They were hardworking. Frankly, though, most of them were no more or less intelligent than their counterparts in non-honors sections, as far as I could tell. I don't have systematically-collected data to confirm this, but the honors students seemed to be disproportionately white, middle-class, and women.</p><p>I have found myself asking several questions about honors education (HE) over the years, though:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>What is the purpose of HE?</li><li>Are honors students better off having HE?</li><li>What do HE programs mean for students from marginalized backgrounds, who are not typically in HE?</li></ol><div>Here are some answers that I've worked through:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Disappointingly, I've yet to hear why we do HE articulated clearly. Inasmuch as there is explanation, it draws on much of the same mission, values, and buzzwords that are used on our campus to articulate what we do more broadly.</li><li>I suspect that the kind of student who would qualify for HE is the kind of student who is likely to be successful with or without HE.</li><li>My fear is that HE diverts resources from those who would benefit most to those who need it the least.</li></ol></div><p></p><p>What the literature in the sociology of education shows is that education, at least as we currently do it, is not an equalizer; instead, it does social reproduction. Honors education seems like a quintessential example. Imagine how much more of an effect that million-dollar donation could have had for at-risk students (i.e. BIPOC, lower-class, first-generation, etc.). It's difficult for me to justify. While honors students are likely to succeed in college and beyond without much help from us, at-risk students benefit from any help that we can offer.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-5902150068695845532020-11-13T10:27:00.000-05:002020-11-13T10:27:58.073-05:00Pop Culture, Decline, and Nostalgia<p>I listen to podcasts on my commute to work. During the summer, when I don't need to commute regularly, the podcasts accumulate so I've been listening to the backlog. I just listened to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/817114598/hank-azaria-on-brockmire-and-why-he-no-longer-performs-apu-on-the-simpsons" target="_blank">a Fresh Air interview</a> this morning from mid-March with Hank Azaria when he discussed his show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5722190/" target="_blank">Brockmire</a>, in which he plays the titular character, a troubled baseball announcer. I had heard about the show before but don't get IFC, where the show airs, so I hadn't thought about it much, which is a little surprising because it checks several boxes for me, being a baseball, comedy, and Azaria fan. I think it's available on Hulu now, though, so I'll probably check it out.</p><p>Hank explained the origins of the series in the interview:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">I created the character when I was a teenager. I saw it as a sketch, as an excuse for a lot of sophomoric laughs, and I had the guy be a blackout drunk because it would justify speaking like that on the air, but [head writer] Joel [Church-Cooper] saw the man's alcoholism coming to the fore and how <b>he kind of represented baseball, and baseball kind of represented what was kind of aging and out of touch in our society, as Brockmire now is as he's been sort of exiled and trying to find his way back</b>. [lightly edited; emphasis added]</p></blockquote><p>As much as I love baseball and it pains me to acknowledge, my love of the game is mostly a nostalgic love. Its popularity has wained over the years, and even though we may still refer to it as "America's pastime," it's more accurately America's pastime of the past. This reminded me of Ken Burn's <a href="https://kenburns.com/films/baseball-2/" target="_blank">Baseball</a>, the sprawling, 19-hour documentary on the institution. Burns has also taken up other Americanisms in his works. <a href="https://kenburns.com/films/jazz-2/" target="_blank">Jazz</a>, for example, documents the birth and development of what is often referred to as America's only truly original artform. Jazz the musical style, though, is inarguably in its terminal, traditionalist genre form (see Lena's <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691150765/banding-together" target="_blank">Banding Together</a>). <b>Like jazz, baseball lingers as a traditional remnant, an artifact of a bygone era that we can't seem to fully jettison, something that still feels definitional even as it's losing popular resonance.</b></p><p>Honestly, Burn's ability to highlight both locations for cultural decline as well as our often-uncritical nostalgia over those institutions is unsettling, especially given some of his other films, like <a href="https://kenburns.com/films/national-parks/" target="_blank">The National Parks</a>. What are our roots? How have they changed and been replaced? How do we relate to that now? <b>Much of our politics today seem to be an abstraction of these very questions, a messy working-out of our past, present, and future.</b></p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-27983328608845439592020-10-28T14:58:00.000-04:002020-10-28T14:58:14.518-04:00The 3B's and Politics<p>I've <a href="https://www.socingoutloud.com/2016/06/visualizing-believingbehavingbelonging.html" target="_blank">written before</a> about the 3 B's approach to understanding religion. Essentially, it argues that we should think about religion as a combination of believing, behaving, and belonging. All religions can be understood to fiddle with those three dials. For example, Evangelical Protestantism sets the knobs for believing and behaving very high, while belonging is fairly low; Reform Judaism sets the knob for belonging at 11, but turns down believing and behaving. In other words, Evangelicals are definitely about having the right beliefs about Jesus but don't care about what denomination or congregation they are a part of, and Jews won't bat an eye if you're an atheist as long as you belong to the tribe. The cultural dominance of Protestantism broadly has hampered the study of religion by focusing too narrowly on believing. We gain predictive power by paying attention to belonging, in particular.</p><p>I think that we could gain a lot to <b>apply this same approach to understanding politics</b>. <b>How do people set their relative knobs for political ideas (believing), political participation (behaving), and party identification (belonging)?</b> We've been hampered by an insistence on the importance of political ideology (i.e. conservative vs. progressive) for too long. People's beliefs are often internally inconsistent and at times not in their own best interest (e.g. working-class folks against social benefits programs). If we take party identification as belonging more seriously, these kind of dissonances become less perplexing because people may have the believing dial turned down and the belonging dial turned up. This is quite evident here in the South, where I live, among Republicans. Many have internalized this label in the same way that they have their loyalty to their favorite college football team (which is to say to the bone). They care far more about their "team" than they do about actual policy. Instead of being dismissive of that, we should take it seriously, just as they do.</p>Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-40943528160190116732020-09-24T14:31:00.003-04:002020-09-24T14:31:21.310-04:00Sentimentalizing Downs <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For some time now, I've noticed something disturbing on social media. There are countless memes and several accounts/pages that are devoted to what I'll call the sentimentalization of Down Syndrome. (I will not link to them here, but they are easily discoverable.) On the surface, the content seems innocuous and heartwarming: cutesy photographs of young children with the physical characteristics typical of trisomy 21. Presumably, those who administer, contribute, disseminate, and "like" the content do so at least in part to destigmatize the condition. In that much, it seems admirable; however, it may have a darker component. I see parallels in the similar treatment of young, black boys. White women (and, yes, it is racialized and gendered because "social construction") will coo and ahh at pictures of black boys, but it is these same white women who will contribute to the negative, racist outcomes for the black males once they stop being cute and start to be perceived as dangerous.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Treating marginalized peoples in the same way that you would a puppy dog does nothing to normalize and everything to perpetuate otherness. The full personhood of those with Downs can be achieved only through full humanization, not through sentimentalization.</div>
Brad Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12851627786696484562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9194240697382766576.post-83594509822541112222020-09-24T11:01:00.002-04:002020-09-24T14:33:27.877-04:00AgSIT and LifecourseHere are some somewhat disjointed thoughts on <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9617.html" target="_blank">Banding Together</a> by Jen Lena and <a href="https://youtu.be/9xGRQJQdgDw" target="_blank">Is Rock Becoming The New Jazz?</a> from Rick Beato.<div><br /></div><div><br /><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9xGRQJQdgDw" width="560"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For the tl;dr, skip to <a href="https://youtu.be/9xGRQJQdgDw?t=632" target="_blank">10:32</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think Rick makes an interesting point. Is what Lena's claim about dominant trajectories really just a life-course effect? Is it that the audience (i.e. the genre community) ages and takes their music with them? How much is the genre trajectory really just the lifecourse trajectory?<br />
<br />Rick calls it "demographic level."<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Avant-garde is the young, whippersnappers breaking rules that they haven't fully learned yet.</li><li>Scene-based is youth settling into geographic stability and creating their own communities.</li><li>Industry-based is the capitalistic exploitation of adults as they start careers and become economically stable.</li><li>Traditionalist is the nostalgic institutionalization of the music of those who are older.</li></ul><div><br /></div>
Lifecourse Stages*<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>
Stage I: Achieving Independence (16-23)</li><ul><li>
Transition from lives centered psychologically and emotionally on parents to lives in which we stand on our own.</li></ul><li>
Stage II: Balancing Family and Work Commitments (18-40)</li><ul><li>
Stable worker, partner/spouse, and parent roles with the challenge of establishing oneself firmly in these roles and forgoing other options.</li><li>
emerging adulthood</li></ul><li>
Stage III: Performing Adult Roles (35-70)</li><ul><li>
An occupational plateau for many employed adults, who seek other challenges such as trying to be good workers, parents, and spouses.</li></ul><li>
Stage IV: Coping with Loss (60-90)</li><ul><li>
The central challenge during this period is to cope with a series of losses, including the loss of one’s occupational role through retirement, loss of significant relationships through death, and the eventual loss of health, energy, and independence.</li></ul></ul>
--</div><div><br />* - DeLamater, John and Daniel Myers. 2007. <i>Social Psychology</i>, 6th ed. Thomson Wadsworth: Belmont, CA. P. 440<br />
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