My new article has been posted by The New Republic.
There is much new information about Alice Goffman's On the Run, including the outcome of the murder case at the end of the book. Here is a sample:
Taken as a whole, On the Run presents a powerful indictment of America's criminal justice system. Since its publication last year, it has received widespread praise within the academic community and resonated strongly with the general public, particularly as events in Ferguson, Baltimore and other American cities have highlighted the problem of overly aggressive policing.
Yet Goffman's book is also profoundly flawed. Rather than celebrating On the Run as a landmark text in sociology, readers should view it as a cautionary tale of what can happen when researchers confuse their own voices with their subjects, and arrange the facts to support a broader, even if admirable, agenda.
The real story of Chuck's death and its aftermath differs from Goffman's account in significant ways, and these differences call into question the reliability of much of her narrative. Indeed, it turns out that she was not fully candid even with her grad school mentors and advisers. By attempting to wall off her subjects with a grant of anonymity, she cuts them off from the rest of the world, fashioning in her book a miniature reality that is ultimately more about its creator than her subjects.
You can read the whole article here.
"Professor Goffman, were you lying then, or are you lying now?"
Posted by: Hmmm | July 15, 2015 at 08:10 PM
If she withheld the anecdote about the drive by incident from her dissertation committee I think that should be grounds for Princeton to review the process and consider a revocation of the degree.
Posted by: polisci | July 17, 2015 at 01:03 PM
I liked the article and appreciate the work you're doing, but I'm not sure why you continue to hold Sudhir Venkatesh up as a standard for ethnographers to follow. His work is plagued by the same kinds of inconsistencies across retellings, he used deception to gain access to his subjects (his primary subject believed Venkatesh was writing a biography of him specifically), by his own admission some of his subjects got hurt after he reported their activities to gang leaders, he was accused of embezzling money from Columbia, has declined to get IRB approval for recent projects (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/nyregion/sudhir-venkatesh-columbias-gang-scholar-lives-on-the-edge.html?_r=0) AND has been accused of manufacturing data by the community of NYC sex workers who were the subject of his last major study (https://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/irb-blues-s-venkatesh-v-new-york-sex-workers/).
Posted by: Another damn sociologist | July 20, 2015 at 02:12 PM
Where are all the regulars, who opine on every aspect of the ethics of research and traffic in organs, on the Planned Parenthood revelations?
Or, are all the revealed facts simply deemed fictions, because these facts don't comport with a preconceived notion of political motivation? Is it ethical to remain silent?
Posted by: anon | July 21, 2015 at 03:13 PM
anon,
While I agree that it is somewhat disappointing that there does not seem to have been a larger conversation about ethnography and ethics more broadly, I think the lack of commentary on this particular post may be due more to the fact that Goffman's book has already been discussed at length on this website than to some conspiracy of silence.
Posted by: Former Editor | July 22, 2015 at 09:17 AM