Resurrecting Sociology as a Vocation

Backstory In March 1987, the Village Voice assigned me to go to Bergenfield, New Jersey, to investigate a suicide pact that involved four teenagers. I wondered "\Xlho are these kids?" I wanted to understand who they were in the context of their families, the town, the school, the economy, and the larger cultural history of youth. At the time, most of the public discussion of suicide was dominated by medical models and psychology. But I viewed the suicide pact as a social act. Sociology allowed me to explain a horrifying event that first grabbed me in the solar plexus and made me cry. For that reason, I will always fight to keep it alive. I hope to shed some light, to offer solne hot tips on how we might better engage the public and lend our sociological vision. This is important to me, because sociology is important to me. The topics I write about today include subur bia, tattoos, guns, cars, rock & roll, pornography, intergenerational love, TV talk shows, and spirituality. It wouldn't occur to me that these suljects were "off limits," unsuitable for a sociological exploration or analysis. The last time I gave a paper at a mainstream academic sociology conference was at the 1987 Eastern Sociological Society meetings in Boston. I was a graduate student at SUNY, Stony Brook, giving a paper on fanzines. My dissertation chair was sitting there in the audience. I had purple hair, he was Lewis Coser. Once, pointing from his office window out to the snowy walkways and trees of eastern Long Island, Coser referred to data as "anything out there." I took him at his word; after that, anything seemed possible. Coser had also been a journalist, and he impressed upon me early on that the social world was complex enough, so the language we use to describe it should not make it more complicated. Today I consider myself a public intellectual. I am self-employed, dividing my work among journalism, teaching, and youth activism. My tax returns say "writer." A few years ago I kegan teaching sociology at Barnard College. Based o n my work in Teenage Wasteland I was invited to develop two courses on youth: Sociology of Youth deals with institutions, the kroad histoley o f young people, intergenerational politics. 05Vorlds of Yotlth focuses on subcultures and subjectivities XXIhile I was devekzping my syllabi it occurred to me how few interesting or even readable works by sociologists were available I was using Becker Berger Merton even Mannheim But where the voices of the 1980s and '90s? Lost in the din of culturcll studies journalism psycholc)gy? How could tnis happen? I've always separated the discipline from the profession the body of knowledge from the career the work from the job The work is wlrat we do from the heart the job is what we have to p ut Up with in order to do it Sociology as palt of my everyday life It isn't "school" it's how I live and where I breathe There are many ways to bring sociological thinking into the world But lnlease be carefulsome of my advice could make you unmarketable You'd never get tenure or make full professor and you could get firecl I have had a very nontraditional career trajectory I was recently interviewed l y the Columbia Spectator in a profile with the headline Barnard's Bold 'Postmodertl' Sociolo,ist, Dotma Gailes, a Rock S Rolling Youth Sociologist, is a Big Hit q,vith Her Studelts XXIhen asked about my work I replied "I consider myself a 'pulnlic' ilatellectual, clS opposed to one who is institutioncllly embedded I made the choice early on that I wanted to have optimal freedom in writing and speaking about social and cultural issues of importance to me An academic career trcljectory would laecessitate different priorities " XXIhen asked to descril e who I aln I answered "I think like a sociologist feel like cl social worker and write like a journalist Postmodern I guess " Teena,ge Wastelald WclS a trade book It was my choice to publish it in that market I wanted to write a bzok my parents could read they were musiciclns I wanted my work to l e widely accessible because it was al Otlt imminent social problems youth suicide alienation and anomie I didla't want it l uried in some obscure scholarly journal Kids were dying; I wantecl to foster some recognition that this was a social, laOt cl psycllologiccll prolDlem. Teenage Wasteland came out of cl cover feature for the Voice, was filed as a doctoral dissertation auctioned clS a