Massey, What I Don’t Know About My Field but Wish I Did
Transcript of Massey, What I Don’t Know About My Field but Wish I Did
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What I Don't Know about My Field but Wish I DidAuthor(s): Douglas S. MasseySource: Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26 (2000), pp. 699-701Published by: Annual ReviewsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/223464.
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Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2000. 26:699-701
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2000
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AnnualReviews. All
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WHAT
I DON'T KNOWABOUTMY FIELD
BUTWISH
I DID
Douglas
S.
Massey
Department
of
Sociology,
University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
19104
As a young college student n the early 1970s, I was veryindecisive. I hadalways
been attracted o academia
but,
having
come of
age during
he
1960s,
I
was deter-
mined
to
do
something
relevant with
my
life.
Earning
a decent
living
was the
last
thing
on
my
mind. Like most of
my contemporaries,
assumed that
a
good
job
with a
high salary
was a
birthright.My duty
was to find a
higher calling.
The search or moral ulfillment
brought
me first o
medicine,
the
most
obvious
of
relevant
rofessions.
As a
premed
student took a full load of courses
n
math,
chemistry,biology, anatomy,
and
physics.
But
I
really
hated
premed
students,
who
were
generally
self-serving, competitive,
and
arrogant.
Who
wants
to be like
that?
Although
I had
already
completed
a
chemistry
minor,
I
gave up
the idea of
helping
people
through
medicine andturned
decisively away
from the natural ciences.
My
search for relevance
brought
me next to the
social sciences.
I
began
in
psychology,
to which I
was attracted
by
its
elegant
experimentaldesigns,
com-
plex
theoretical
models,
and
rigorous
statistical
analyses.
Although
I
eventually
completed
a
psychology major
and took most of the
courses needed for a master's
degree,
running
rats
through
mazes
in
a
laboratory
ost its allure and I
once
again
began looking
for
something
more relevant.
My
search
led me then to
anthropology.
After an
early
fascinationwith
phys-
ical
anthropology
and hominid
evolution,
I
became
intriguedby
the
concept
of
culturalrelativismandeagerlyreadethnography fterethnography f nonwestern
cultures.
Eventually,
however,
I
suffered anothercrisis of faith. If
all
judgments
were
culturally
relative,
and all cultures
were
equally
valid,
then
the
possibility
of
knowing anything
at all
seemed to
disappear
before
my
eyes
as a
solipsism.
I
retreated
back into the
study
of
Spanish
literature,
where
professors
made no
pretense
of
offering
cumulative
knowledge.
At
least
I
could
indulge
my
love of the
language by
reading my
way through
he
new
genre
of
magical
realism that
was
then
taking
Latin
America
by
storm.
Suddenly
I
found
myself
in
my
fourth
year
of
undergraduate
tudies
having
completed
three
majors
and a
chemistry
minor,
but still
having
no clear idea of
who I was or what I wantedto do in life. At thismoment,I stumbledupon demog-
raphy,
which
to
my
mind
combined
the
rigor
of
psychology
with the relevanceof
0360-0572/00/0815-0699$14.00
699
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700 MASSEY
anthropology,
while
offering
some
hope
of
intellectual
advance.
I thus
resolved
to
become a
demographer,
nd toward hat end
began takingevery sociology
course
I could find.Eventually stayedonfortwo extraquarterso boneupontheoryand
methods,
to steel
myself
for what
I
imagined
to be
my
dim
prospects
for success
in
graduate
chool.
The
rest,
as
they say,
is
history:
I went
on to finish a
PhD in
sociology
at
Princeton,
where
I
was trained
in classical
demographic
methods but
actually
worked
in the heterodox
fields
(for
Princeton)
of
migration
and human
ecology.
This is a
long-winded
way
of
coming
to what
I
don't
know about
my
field
but
wish
that
I
did.
Although
my
various intellectual
ourneys
have
given
me a
relatively
broad
ntellectual
ormation,
nonetheless
ind
myself
wishing
I had a
better
grasp
of
human
beings
as
biological
organisms.
Indeed,I have come to the reluctant onclusionthatsociologists havegone too
far
in
privileging
he
social over the
biological,
a fact thathaunts
me now
as
I
try
to
comprehend
he
signal
event that has occurred
n
my
own fields
of
migration
and
human
ecology:
the
urbanization f the human
population.
The urban ndustrialism
in the
nineteenth
century
ulled
sociologists
into the false
belief that
society
could
be
understood
by studying
social structures
alone,
without
considering
human
beings
as
organisms
with
biological
traitsand
predispositions.
Although
we don't
like to admit
it,
we
are
primates
who
share
99%
of our
genetic
endowment
with
chimpanzees.
Humansemergedfrom the savannahsof East Africa
7 million
years ago.
In
adapting
o this
niche,
we evolved as
upright,
ool-using
hominids
who survived
through
collective
strategies
implementedby
small
groups.
Over
the
course
of
millions of
years,
the
reptilian
brain
governing
our instinctual
and emotional
re-
sponses
was
supplemented
with
a newer
and thicker
mass of cerebral
cortex.
The
expansion
of
brain
size
enabled
the
perfection
of collective
strategies
of survival
involving
language,
culture,
and
technology.
These innovations
ultimately
ed
to
larger
and more
complex
forms of social
organization,
but 99.9%
of
human ex-
perience
has nonetheless
transpired
n the
hunting
and
gathering
state.
Thus,
the
delicate
balance
between
the rational
and emotional
brain,
which
largely
defines
us as humanbeings, must be oriented oward he needsof smallgroupsurvival.
It was
only
about
six thousand
years
ago
that
we settled down
as a
species
and
began
farming,
hus
enabling
the first
semi-permanent
uman
habitations.
t was
only
about
three thousand
years
ago
that
our
technology
advanced
sufficiently
o
allow
some
of
these settlements
o become
cities;
and
t was
only
in
the last
century
that our
capabilities
matured
o the
point
where
a
majority
of us
can
now
live in
cities.
In
evolutionary
erms,
our
experience
n urban
settings
has occurred
n
the
blink
of an
eye.
It
is
clear,
however,
that
early
in
the
next
century
the
human
population
will
finally
and
decisively
urbanize.
All
demographic
projections
how
that
for the first
time in
history
a
majority
of the world's human
beings
will soon live in cities,
and
increasingly
n
large
ones
at that.
The
social
world
to
which
we have
adapted
over
millions
of
years
will
recede
into
memory
and cease
to exist. Small
bands
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FUTUREOFDEMOGRAPHY
701
of huntersand
gatherers, arger
nomadic
tribes,
isolated rural
villages,
and small
semi-independent
owns-all will
ultimately
disappear.
In
the next
century,
the
modal humanexperiencewill be one of intense concentrations f people,with all
their
vices and virtues.
A
central
question
is
how
we,
as a
biological species
adapted
o life in small
groups,
will fare in
this new environment.The
beginning
point
in
coming
to terms
with our situationmust be the realization
hatwe are indeed
biological organisms.
I
and other
sociologists
thus
need to
understand etter he fundamentals f
human
physiology
and
psychology
at both the
systemic
and molecular evels. We need
to educate ourselves
in
the
exciting
work now
being
done on brain
functioning,
cognition,
the
regulation
of
emotion,
and the
biological
bases of behavior.We
need
to
give
up
our historical
resistence to the idea that
social behaviorhas
biological
roots andacceptthe fact thatwe, as humanbeings,haveinheritedcertainpredis-
positions
to
thought
and behavior hat
nfluenceand
constrain he social
structures
thatwe
unconsciously
evolve and
rationally
elect. At
this
point,
therefore,
really
wish I
knew more about
human
beings
as
biological
rather han
social
organisms,
and
I
have
begun reading
to catch
up.
Visit the
Annual Reviews
home
page
at
www.AnnualReviews.org
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