Youth and Social Media I, ch. 1-3

· Read 04/13/21

Sociology vs anthro

Soc in US: largely quantitative, aiming toward big generalizability; when TL was applying to grad school there were like 3 options with strong qualitative methods
Diff relationship w/ structure and institutions
TL talks about ethnography as a method, co-author believes it's "simply about writing"
Both disciplines have fraught history; anthro's relationship to colonialism; soc: race science, othering, criminology and deviance; we don't talk enough about how so much of soc now is about training people to work in the carceral system
Kindreds
Soc is anchored in a long history of social theory (Marx, Weber, Durkheim), sees itself invested in a much longer convo around theory; anthro thinks about its theoretical lineage the same way
Anthro has done a better job of reckoning with its problematic roots than soc has; maybe because the colonialism could not be dodged
"From my experience in anthropology the foundational ideas of like Geertz and Malinowski were criticized in anthropology these days so the politics of citation vs say weber or Durkheim are also different (tho of course Durkheim has his critics too)?"
Anthropologists are often beautiful writers
Other tricky question: How is ethnography different from journalism?

Interdisciplinary piece of work that really tries to sit in the field of urban sociology, speaking to that audience
Appendix: he has to make the case for doing Internet research; this tells us where the field is
Does a good job of referencing books and deploying theory

One of the most important interventions: bringing up the role of women in street life
Somewhere in appendix: if you're not paying attention to the digital, you're not getting the full story, you're missing the women
Could’ve deciphered without such an opinionated interpretation
Could've spent more time contextualizing why boy-girl relations were important (and also defining "street life")