Sociology is driven by human interaction and a desire for social good.
Just before joining Stanford University Press this past February, I decided to take the trip of a lifetime. I booked my ticket to Bordeaux, and plotted the route by bus and train to St. Jean Pied-de-Port—a small, medieval French town at the foot of the Pyrenees and famed starting point of the traditional pilgrimage across northern Spain, the Camino de Santiago. Six weeks from that point, I arrived at the lighthouse at the end of the world, in Finisterre.
For a trip so destination-oriented, the Camino had a strange muddling effect on any notions I had about the trajectory of my life. I had been working in publishing in New York City for four years before deciding that I would prefer to join the ranks of academics whose books I was helping to publish. That was the plan, at any rate, when I started across the mountain range that first day. I would spend my time contemplating my program of study in the days to follow, trekking among the vineyards, over highways, and through austere farming villages.
But instead of thinking about what academic track would make the most sense for me, I was distracted by the people around me—walking archives of tragedy, humor, nostalgia, and empathy—some of whom became like family to me for that relatively short span of time, and others with whom I interacted only once, maybe with just a passing smile. But even in those cases, their stories often wound back to me in the words of others. Over soup in a hostel one night I was asked, “Did you hear about the 87-year-old woman from New Zealand who is walking the Camino alone?” A face surfaced in my memory, smiling at me from underneath her pink knit hat as we waited in line for coffee, weeks ago. “She told me that her family is moving her into a nursing home next year and won’t let her travel on her own any more after this. She plans to throw her boots into the ocean at the end.”
Sociology’s terrain is vast and varied—possibly personified by the pilgrim stopping into a hostel and finding kinship among strangers.
I’ve heard that some of the best editors are those who thought they would only do the job for a few years, but can’t stop themselves from coming back. The Camino is said to have a similar effect, calling people back throughout their lives. My theory is that the reason for this may in fact be the same: addiction to the lessons different people can teach—and the hunger to learn as many of them as you can. There are so many good stories out there, and the thrill of recognizing one, cherishing it, cultivating it, sharing it, watching others experience the same thrill as they get told the story for the first time—once you realize that is what you love, it is impossible to feel completely contented with anything else.
Sociology is unique in affording this privilege perhaps more overtly than other disciplines. Topically, sociology’s terrain is vast and varied—possibly personified by the pilgrim stopping into a hostel and finding kinship among strangers, and leaving the next day with a completely different group, forming new bonds, and coming away with different lessons. Human interaction is an intrinsic theme of sociological study—be it on an individual or institutional level. And at its core is usually a social justice component, much in the same way that the pilgrim’s emblem is a scallop shell symbolizing a hand outstretched, ready to perform good deeds.
Human interaction is an intrinsic theme of sociological study and at its core is usually a social justice component.
The theme for this year’s ASA conference is inequality, and its relevance to current events is quite painfully obvious. The multiple panels discussing how to survive our current political realities make plain the linkages between this field and the world we live in. At a recent conference on inequality I heard a scholar say, “We created these problems, so we must be able to solve them.” This mantra is infused into so much of the research going on now, as exemplified by Stanford’s own series in Social Inequality, with published and forthcoming titles that confront head on the fraught landscape we live in today. I’m so happy to be able to work on books with such immediate resonance to the wider world; books that recover the experiences of transnational migrants and their families, books that expose systemic inequities, including in places we might not otherwise think to look, and books that look to past events and across the globe to understand how people participate in the world around them.
I came back from one long journey and found myself immediately embarking on another, in many ways more life altering, one. As with the former, I’m eager to learn the lessons you all have to teach, and to help you tell your stories to others. I hope you’ll forgive this somewhat forced metaphor from a book editor searching for the narrative arc.
Comments