“Sociology as Class War”: I’m at AmCon

“Sociology as Class War”: I’m at AmCon January 16, 2015

asking why progressives keep greasing the camel:

I just finished Andrew Cherlin’s new book, Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America. It’s a solid piece of historically-informed synthesis.

But it’s also full of examples of my least-favorite feature of contemporary sociology of the family. Because almost all writing that gets labeled “sociology” is done by members of the overeducated elite, the values common among that elite are taken for granted and treated as objectively correct, whereas values common in working-class or poor communities are pathologized. “Good parenting,” for example, is defined as parenting the way the upper class does it.

This gives sociology an unpleasant us-helping-them flavor. Bad enough when elites try “teaching folk songs to the folk“; must they now teach Ivy League fight songs to the folk?

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