Al,
Up front I will concede you may be right, but I want to pose some
alternatives.
1) when in doubt assume SNAFU (I hope everyone can unpack the abbrev).
we missed by 16 for other session. There need only have been 15 others
besides me who did not get around to sending in ASA dues on time to have
pushed us under.
2) Discussing Wagar is not so utopian a fantasy. I've used it twice in a
social change class and it works well to get students to look at the very
difficult issues you chart from phase one, because Wagar's novel helps them
see how stuff about the third world-first world relates to their lives and
their futures. Although, I must admit, the green issue has much more flash
for students, and had I been the one axing a session I might have done it
differently......
3) There may other reasons for PEWS decline. I want to toss out a few and
see if anyone has some good, or even plausible evidence to sort among them.
I divide them into two classes: A) those around form or social structure
and B) those relating to content.
A.1. PEWS is often seen as the Wallerstein section of insiders talking to
each other. If you are not in the network by training with doctoral mentor
you do not join.
2. PEWS is not really (and never was) part of sociology, it is really
history, geography, now archaeology, anthropology or something else. For
me that is its attraction. Sociologists, qua sociologists are a very
parochial lot. Remember when Pews was founded the critique of American
sociology as the sociology of ONE (rather boring) case was fresh, and often
on the mark.
3. What does one do with specialty in PEWS or PEWS-like things? Consult
for some left wing revolutions where if the CIA does get you the overly
zealous revolutionary will? Compare with deviance with prison building as
growth industry, race/ethnicity as a perennial problem, medical sociology
as a growth industry.... This is not a critique of these things of
themselves, but of the state of academe. I know of several people, who as
MA students, and initially as graduate students were most interested in
PEWS or pews-like stuff but for whom the possibility of a continuing
paycheck has forced them to retool in these other areas.
4. We are somewhat fractionated. One problem with ASA is too many
sections. The overlap of Marxist, PEWS, Comparative Historical, and
Political is extraordinary. I've belonged to all but political for 5 to 10
years.
B. Content based.
1. To quote your own editorial a while back, now that the wall is down
what is the salience of left analyses of any sort? The question can be
asked again, with the preface, now that its a NEWT year? Probably everyone
on WSN & PSN could write long, well-reasoned rebuttal to this popular
perception, but the perception is out there. This slides back to
structural explanations, espec. #3: if students think that, they don't
take those courses, there is less demand for those faculty, so graduate
students are pressured (by circumstances, if not individuals) to go into
other areas so they can get a job....
2. One point on which I agree with you entirely is PEWS has not done a
good enough job on connecting its work with current global phenomena: we
have not dealt all that well with job loss for the US re Wilson's thesis,
or even (espec?) the LA riots, we have not dealt with globalization or
glocalization [how local manifests itself in global processes], we have not
dealt with ecology movement (Al Bergesen, Luiz Barbosa, and few others
being notable exceptions). The list could go on. It is not so much that
we (or someone in PEWS) has not dealt with these issues, but we have not
done it as a section in such a way to draw in new members and new interest.
3. We HAVE become arcane (I know I am one of those) and have not done a
good enough job making our arcana relevant to the general discipline.
4. This may fit better under A, but the section is aging and we have not
been doing a good job of recruiting younger members--a common problem of
rebels who start something new--they have spent so much time
attacking/tearing down an old institution they do not attend to building a
new one.
A final A+B: PEWS has lots of natural allies outside of sociology:
geography, world history, parts of anthropology and archaeology, and ASA
makes it very expensive for us to draw those folks in.
Finally, tight budgets for travel, personally for membership, have made
"fellow travelling" in organizations expensive, and caused people to cut
back. Given our half in half out of sociology position, we get hurt.
While all the above seem plausible to me (in varying degrees) I have no
hard, or even circumstantial evidence, to sort among them or assess
relative weights. Good evidence would be most welcome.
Only if we can figure out what is wrong can we hope to fix it. Al tossed
out some info on other sections, does anyone have a handle on how many have
grown, stayed the same, or shrunk in the last few years?
nuff blather....
tom hall
thall@depauw.edu