Scholars are exposed to and trained how to do comprehensive literature reviews, collect data in a systematic manner, analyze this information using appropriate methods, make interpretations from this evaluation, and then subject their findings to peer review.
This process is typically resource intense and often frustrating. But this is how academics conduct rigorous scientific research.
Sometimes, for one reason or another, individuals and organizations outside of the academy (e.g., community, political, religious, or social organizations including professional/practitioner groups) reach out and ask us to give a talk or a speech in front of the group they represent or are part of.
Our initial reaction to these sorts of requests may be mixed, ranging anywhere from elation to fear.
On the other hand, given the infrequent perks that most professors get, these external invitations may seem like a relatively attractive opportunity.
After all, as part of our jobs, we present papers or give talks at learned society meetings, and some of us give lectures to a colleague’s class in our department, college, university or for a professor at another educational institution. But the invitation to a nonacademic group is a different beast.
In the early part of an academic’s career the opportunity to present in front of an audience outside the academy, may feel like a real boost to our egos. It may even allow us to check the nebulous box on our year end productivity reports that ask us if we did any community service.
After having our most recent paper rejected by a well-respected peer reviewed journal on what we believe to be tenuous or spurious grounds, it feels good to be recognized beyond the academy for the work we do. We even might ask ourselves, how often do we get this kind of public acknowledgement?
We may even get a free trip to a relatively attractive venue where we give our speech. The organizer may even allow us to bring our partner and kids along. (Imagine you giving your speech in front of a crowded room, with an attentive audience, while your family members are frolicking at the hotel’s pool).
We could even receive a small honorarium and we may even be able to spin the talk into an op-ed in a nonacademic publication, an information item that the folks working at our University’s Public Relations department might be interested in.
Occasionally these kinds of talks will allow you to make connections that you can translate into future research or consulting opportunities. They may even give you special access, often denied to outsiders, to watch the organization in action, or data for analysis.
These talks may also force you to think about the problems you typically analyze in a different manner and thus motivate you to read more deeply and widely than you normally do.
But over time, giving talks to nonacademic organizations, can also have downsides.
What are they?
There is no denying that no matter how hard you try to minimize the resource commitment; these kinds of talks will take you away from your scholarly activities. If you are a tenure track assistant professor then these kinds of talks will cut into your research time that you can be doing scholarship and publishing in peer review journals. How much time these talks takes vary on a number of easily discernible factors (e.g., location, specific subject they want you to talk on, etc.).
Most importantly, however, sometimes these kinds of speaking gigs unnecessarily lead you to take positions that you may not initially agree with or that are not based on empirical evidence.
In this situation you have been captured by the audience. And when you find yourself in this position, there are a handful of ways you can respond. One is to dig in your heals, and step up your efforts to find research or craft rebuttals to criticisms to support your unpopular position, or you can stop.
This is why scholars must choose wisely among these kinds of opportunities and to carefully and honestly gauge to whom and why you are engaging in this kind of activity. If it is ego driven, then it is probably time to stop. If you truly believe in the mission of the organization then it might be time to start thinking of yourself as more of an activist, than a scholar. These are hard choices to make. But make them you should.
Photo credit:
Brent MooreFollow
Rubber Chicken
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/378937797_d9eaafde64_o.jpg11441784Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-12-23 15:00:452022-10-02 12:23:39Academics shouldn’t be seduced by the rubber chicken banquet circuit
Part of the reason may be because many people fail to consider how knowledge and expertise are acquired, and the relative contributions and limitations of lived and practitioner experience to inform scholarly research.
Knowledge and expertise about a field may be accumulated a variety of different ways.
In general, and in simplest terms, there are two principle methods.
The first approach, typically starts with earning a formal education, which includes progressing through different and harder stages (e.g., bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees). During this training, mentorship, and credentialization process you conduct research and subject it to peer review. This is long and sometimes painful process. But over time hopefully this work provides important insights to move the scholarly discipline forward.
The second method, is derived through lived or practitioner experience. In this case you work in particular field, like policing or social work, and over a considerable period of time, you are hopefully exposed to a number of different situations and challenges, and learn how to effectively with them. Alternatively, you are frequently part of the subject population that the practitioners focus on, or you work closely and regularly with these individuals. In the field of criminal justice, this role may encompass being a criminal/perpetuator, district attorney, judge, or a victim of a crime. And thus you learn about a variety of subtle dynamics rarely experienced by outsiders.
Why might lived or practitioner experience be helpful for academics?
It can help them understand a variety of subtleties concerning a person, organization or situation, that they may not be aware of and/or ignored.
It can also assist scholars to understand selected elements of a discipline, but their value is typically context specific.
The fact that an academic may have interned at a police department or in a court system at some point in time in their life or career, or they consult for a police department is not the same as being in the trenches as a practitioner for an extended period of time.
On the other hand, spending a considerable amount of time as a practitioner, say for example, a correctional officer, and rising up the ranks, over a significant time frame may expose that person to lots of different situations, but it does not mean that they understand the concerns of scholars who specialize in a relevant discipline. Likewise, a well-respected gang member, may know how to survive on the mean streets, but this does not mean they are well versed in criminological theory.
Thus, it’s important to critically analyze not only the merits of academic research, particularly its ability to represent the lived reality of people, places, and situations, but at the same time not assume that all lived or practitioner experience is the same or can equally assist us to understand our relative academic disciplines.
In short, although practical and lived experience can inform our scholarship, it is not sufficient to the research enterprise.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2021-12-15-at-10.36.10-PM.png616658Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-12-16 15:18:272025-01-18 17:04:40Although lived or practitioner experience may be helpful in understanding a field, it’s not an end in and of itself
Surf the world wide web, or skim social media, and you might notice that the label, term and concept “street culture” is primarily associated with clothing – sneakers, baseball caps, or t-shirts – produced by existing, emerging, or brand new streetwear companies (e.g., BAPE, Stüssy, Supreme, etc.).
Although a definition of street culture is rarely advanced, we can probably take it to mean the “beliefs, dispositions, ideologies, informal rules, practices, styles, symbols, and values associated with, adopted by, and engaged in by individuals and organizations that spend a disproportionate amount of time on the street of large urban centers” (Ross, 2021, p. 2)
Pairing the street culture concept with streetwear is a savvy marketing technique and if it ends up calling attention to and generates more sales of the products that streetwear companies design, manufacture, and sell then from a commercial point of view it has served an important purpose.
Associating street culture with streetwear might also draw some additional attention to commodities and practices that have their origins on the street, such as graffiti and street art, different types of street food, and music (e.g., rap, hip hop, etc.), and the more negative kinds of things like street crime, etc. but in the fast paced, highly commercialized world of streetwear this additional connection is rarely made.
Unfortunately the coupling of the street culture concept with streetwear frequently reinforces a narrow and perhaps skewed idea of what street culture is all about.
Street culture, while having a connection with streetwear, is a much broader concept than what the average streetwear purchaser and aficionado of this type of clothing has come to understand. In short street culture includes a larger and more diverse collection of things, people, places, and concepts.
Street culture includes a range of human activities; some pleasant (i.e., walking, running, shopping, selling, purchasing, etc.) and others not so pleasant (i.e., urban incivilities, committing crimes, being a victim of crime, etc.) that take place on the streets, the diversity of people who occupy this informal public space (e.g., from shopkeepers to police, pedestrians, to homeless people), and the methods by which these individuals interact with each other and the built environment or public space.
More importantly, street culture typically undergirds and frames our relationships on the streets, the way we interact with people in these unique environments versus in other types of settings such as school, work, and family life. Understanding and respecting street culture may for some people be the difference between life and death.
Most streetwear brands, despite some of their crafty rhetoric and visual statements, are not trying to draw the public’s attention to street culture nor care if consumers understand the dynamics of what goes on in the streets, especially the interactions that take place among people, young and old people, people of different ethnic, racial and genders, etc. This is not their job.
But before you can walk away from your latest purchase of an article of clothing or accessory from a streetwear brand, also understand you are only getting one small part of the larger picture. Maybe as a consumer you don’t want to be bothered by the larger details and cultural context of the items you purchase. But it exits and an increasing amount of popular and scholarly literature in the fields of urban sociology, anthropology, and criminology deal in whole or in part with street culture. The latter is free for the taking. And in most cases this information, unlike streetwear, is publicly available and free for taking. All you need to do is educate yourself about it.
Photo Credit
Photographer: Eden, Janine and Jim
Title Supreme
(Photographer Robert J Stevens gives the credit for this piece as “YOUTHWASTE x DKUP x OPTIMO x DEPSONE x SUPREMENYC X LAROC.” I can see the DKUP part….)
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/13899163329_40723ec218_o.jpg12982306Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-12-09 16:27:022024-12-15 17:40:14Street Culture is more than streetwear
Academics shouldn’t be seduced by the rubber chicken banquet circuit
/by Jeffrey Ian RossScholars are exposed to and trained how to do comprehensive literature reviews, collect data in a systematic manner, analyze this information using appropriate methods, make interpretations from this evaluation, and then subject their findings to peer review.
This process is typically resource intense and often frustrating. But this is how academics conduct rigorous scientific research.
Sometimes, for one reason or another, individuals and organizations outside of the academy (e.g., community, political, religious, or social organizations including professional/practitioner groups) reach out and ask us to give a talk or a speech in front of the group they represent or are part of.
Our initial reaction to these sorts of requests may be mixed, ranging anywhere from elation to fear.
On the other hand, given the infrequent perks that most professors get, these external invitations may seem like a relatively attractive opportunity.
After all, as part of our jobs, we present papers or give talks at learned society meetings, and some of us give lectures to a colleague’s class in our department, college, university or for a professor at another educational institution. But the invitation to a nonacademic group is a different beast.
In the early part of an academic’s career the opportunity to present in front of an audience outside the academy, may feel like a real boost to our egos. It may even allow us to check the nebulous box on our year end productivity reports that ask us if we did any community service.
After having our most recent paper rejected by a well-respected peer reviewed journal on what we believe to be tenuous or spurious grounds, it feels good to be recognized beyond the academy for the work we do. We even might ask ourselves, how often do we get this kind of public acknowledgement?
We may even get a free trip to a relatively attractive venue where we give our speech. The organizer may even allow us to bring our partner and kids along. (Imagine you giving your speech in front of a crowded room, with an attentive audience, while your family members are frolicking at the hotel’s pool).
We could even receive a small honorarium and we may even be able to spin the talk into an op-ed in a nonacademic publication, an information item that the folks working at our University’s Public Relations department might be interested in.
Occasionally these kinds of talks will allow you to make connections that you can translate into future research or consulting opportunities. They may even give you special access, often denied to outsiders, to watch the organization in action, or data for analysis.
These talks may also force you to think about the problems you typically analyze in a different manner and thus motivate you to read more deeply and widely than you normally do.
But over time, giving talks to nonacademic organizations, can also have downsides.
What are they?
There is no denying that no matter how hard you try to minimize the resource commitment; these kinds of talks will take you away from your scholarly activities. If you are a tenure track assistant professor then these kinds of talks will cut into your research time that you can be doing scholarship and publishing in peer review journals. How much time these talks takes vary on a number of easily discernible factors (e.g., location, specific subject they want you to talk on, etc.).
Most importantly, however, sometimes these kinds of speaking gigs unnecessarily lead you to take positions that you may not initially agree with or that are not based on empirical evidence.
In this situation you have been captured by the audience. And when you find yourself in this position, there are a handful of ways you can respond. One is to dig in your heals, and step up your efforts to find research or craft rebuttals to criticisms to support your unpopular position, or you can stop.
This is why scholars must choose wisely among these kinds of opportunities and to carefully and honestly gauge to whom and why you are engaging in this kind of activity. If it is ego driven, then it is probably time to stop. If you truly believe in the mission of the organization then it might be time to start thinking of yourself as more of an activist, than a scholar. These are hard choices to make. But make them you should.
Photo credit:
Brent MooreFollow
Rubber Chicken
Although lived or practitioner experience may be helpful in understanding a field, it’s not an end in and of itself
/by Jeffrey Ian RossA considerable amount of confusion exists surrounding the concepts and utility of lived and practitioner (or field) experience as methods to inform scholarly research.
Part of the reason may be because many people fail to consider how knowledge and expertise are acquired, and the relative contributions and limitations of lived and practitioner experience to inform scholarly research.
Knowledge and expertise about a field may be accumulated a variety of different ways.
In general, and in simplest terms, there are two principle methods.
The first approach, typically starts with earning a formal education, which includes progressing through different and harder stages (e.g., bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees). During this training, mentorship, and credentialization process you conduct research and subject it to peer review. This is long and sometimes painful process. But over time hopefully this work provides important insights to move the scholarly discipline forward.
The second method, is derived through lived or practitioner experience. In this case you work in particular field, like policing or social work, and over a considerable period of time, you are hopefully exposed to a number of different situations and challenges, and learn how to effectively with them. Alternatively, you are frequently part of the subject population that the practitioners focus on, or you work closely and regularly with these individuals. In the field of criminal justice, this role may encompass being a criminal/perpetuator, district attorney, judge, or a victim of a crime. And thus you learn about a variety of subtle dynamics rarely experienced by outsiders.
Why might lived or practitioner experience be helpful for academics?
It can help them understand a variety of subtleties concerning a person, organization or situation, that they may not be aware of and/or ignored.
It can also assist scholars to understand selected elements of a discipline, but their value is typically context specific.
The fact that an academic may have interned at a police department or in a court system at some point in time in their life or career, or they consult for a police department is not the same as being in the trenches as a practitioner for an extended period of time.
On the other hand, spending a considerable amount of time as a practitioner, say for example, a correctional officer, and rising up the ranks, over a significant time frame may expose that person to lots of different situations, but it does not mean that they understand the concerns of scholars who specialize in a relevant discipline. Likewise, a well-respected gang member, may know how to survive on the mean streets, but this does not mean they are well versed in criminological theory.
Thus, it’s important to critically analyze not only the merits of academic research, particularly its ability to represent the lived reality of people, places, and situations, but at the same time not assume that all lived or practitioner experience is the same or can equally assist us to understand our relative academic disciplines.
In short, although practical and lived experience can inform our scholarship, it is not sufficient to the research enterprise.
Street Culture is more than streetwear
/by Jeffrey Ian RossSurf the world wide web, or skim social media, and you might notice that the label, term and concept “street culture” is primarily associated with clothing – sneakers, baseball caps, or t-shirts – produced by existing, emerging, or brand new streetwear companies (e.g., BAPE, Stüssy, Supreme, etc.).
Although a definition of street culture is rarely advanced, we can probably take it to mean the “beliefs, dispositions, ideologies, informal rules, practices, styles, symbols, and values associated with, adopted by, and engaged in by individuals and organizations that spend a disproportionate amount of time on the street of large urban centers” (Ross, 2021, p. 2)
Pairing the street culture concept with streetwear is a savvy marketing technique and if it ends up calling attention to and generates more sales of the products that streetwear companies design, manufacture, and sell then from a commercial point of view it has served an important purpose.
Associating street culture with streetwear might also draw some additional attention to commodities and practices that have their origins on the street, such as graffiti and street art, different types of street food, and music (e.g., rap, hip hop, etc.), and the more negative kinds of things like street crime, etc. but in the fast paced, highly commercialized world of streetwear this additional connection is rarely made.
Unfortunately the coupling of the street culture concept with streetwear frequently reinforces a narrow and perhaps skewed idea of what street culture is all about.
Street culture, while having a connection with streetwear, is a much broader concept than what the average streetwear purchaser and aficionado of this type of clothing has come to understand. In short street culture includes a larger and more diverse collection of things, people, places, and concepts.
Street culture includes a range of human activities; some pleasant (i.e., walking, running, shopping, selling, purchasing, etc.) and others not so pleasant (i.e., urban incivilities, committing crimes, being a victim of crime, etc.) that take place on the streets, the diversity of people who occupy this informal public space (e.g., from shopkeepers to police, pedestrians, to homeless people), and the methods by which these individuals interact with each other and the built environment or public space.
More importantly, street culture typically undergirds and frames our relationships on the streets, the way we interact with people in these unique environments versus in other types of settings such as school, work, and family life. Understanding and respecting street culture may for some people be the difference between life and death.
Most streetwear brands, despite some of their crafty rhetoric and visual statements, are not trying to draw the public’s attention to street culture nor care if consumers understand the dynamics of what goes on in the streets, especially the interactions that take place among people, young and old people, people of different ethnic, racial and genders, etc. This is not their job.
But before you can walk away from your latest purchase of an article of clothing or accessory from a streetwear brand, also understand you are only getting one small part of the larger picture. Maybe as a consumer you don’t want to be bothered by the larger details and cultural context of the items you purchase. But it exits and an increasing amount of popular and scholarly literature in the fields of urban sociology, anthropology, and criminology deal in whole or in part with street culture. The latter is free for the taking. And in most cases this information, unlike streetwear, is publicly available and free for taking. All you need to do is educate yourself about it.
Photo Credit
Photographer: Eden, Janine and Jim
Title Supreme
(Photographer Robert J Stevens gives the credit for this piece as “YOUTHWASTE x DKUP x OPTIMO x DEPSONE x SUPREMENYC X LAROC.” I can see the DKUP part….)