Howdy

And they said that irony was dead. For the past few years I have been playing with the handle "a simple country sociologist" because it expresses in a mildly sardonic fashion a self commentary and a judgment. I am about as “simple” and “country” as a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (a Black Forest cherry cake). But it might get a chuckle and a bit of attention. I am, however, a sociologist, and one that has taken upon himself the task of making the world more aware of what sociology has to offer. It is one of the more neglected social sciences, taking a rather cramped back seat to Anthropology or Economics. In fact, Economics, the “dismal science,” has become the celebrity du jour of the social sciences, sucking up almost all the face time in the media no matter how repetitive and worthless the message. Thus, I have begun a commercial venture (Within-USA, Inc.) with the purpose of spreading the sociological gospel among other good works.

However, it appears that in the United States, a valuable tradition has been allowed to wither and almost vanish from the socio-cultural scene. Those of us who had the good fortune to attend public high schools when actual content was taught can remember exposure to the great American intellectual tradition of good writing and pragmatic inquiry. Today, what passes for writing shames the hunter-gatherers who took the trouble to invent language. And inquiry! People no longer inquire; they start by concluding, and then inquire how they can work their way back to their conclusions. But as a devotee of the work of Jean Baudrillard, it is not seemly to become too much of a curmudgeon. This blog will allow me ample opportunity for that and there are more pressing matters which need discussion, health care reform, in particular, which will be the subject of my next post.

Before going any further, I should introduce myself. I was born in Brooklyn when the Dodgers still played in Ebbets Field and trolley cars rolled on Church Avenue. My family moved around a bit but most of my childhood was spent on Long Island. After obtaining a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, I went to law school for a year but decided that was a dark alley best avoided. My Ph.D. in sociology is from the University of California, San Francisco. For the past twenty years I have taught in the sociology department of Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. New York to California to Missouri.

Springfield is not a place I would have imagined myself spending time, but it has its charms. Its geographic centrality makes it a kind of microcosm of the country as a whole, or you would think so. However, there are elements in its composition that make it distinctly unlike the rest of the country. It is a small city of 160,000 which does not reflect the racial or ethnic diversity of the rest of America. It is a decidedly conservative place but nonetheless a lively progressive element manages to thrive as well. Right now it is bitterly cold, dangerously so, and we had an ice storm three years ago that required the presence of the National Guard in its aftermath. I have included some recent photos of Springfield. These are not typical scenes but they convey a sense of civilization as it has been planted on the great American prairie. I began as a highly urbanized individual who took for granted all the amenities of places like New York and San Francisco, but after all this time I have developed a respect and even an affection for this “Queen City of the Ozarks.”