It’s a simple fact of life. People need and want to get places, and unless they walk everywhere, we need somewhere to temporarily or permanently store the objects that they use to assist them getting to their destinations.
Some of those items (e.g., bicycles, hover boards, razors, roller blades, and skateboards) are relatively easy to store, where as others (e.g., buses, cars, planes, and subways) are more difficult.
Over the past century, in modern cities, the horse and buggy gave way to public transit systems with buses, trams, streetcars, and subways and to private vehicles and taxis (and now Ubers, Lyfts, etc.), the latter of which dominate most urban landscapes. These vehicles are a blessing and a curse. They cost lots to operate, and create plenty of externalities (e.g., pollution, etc.).
If you are a driver and/or a pedestrian then at some point in time you are going to have to deal not just with vehicles in motion, but with parked cars. Parking a vehicle not only represents a place to temporarily store your valuable material possession, but this act is imbued with lots of other subtle considerations.
In many respects parking is often a contest, exchange, or game bounded by subtle forms of power, and contests over private and public urban space. This is played out and/or decided in questions like: where will we allow vehicles to park?; what types of vehicles will we permit to park?, when will we allow them to park?; should we charge them to park?, how much should this cost?, etc. etc.?
For example, when we talk about parking, we need to consider the size of the vehicle. This is especially noticeable when one travels outside of Canada and the United States. In general, it’s easier to park a car in European countries where the majority of cars are small versus the big gas guzzling cars on this side of the Atlantic.
Alternatively, many cities have very difficult to negotiate street parking restrictions at certain times of the day. In the morning during rush hour, the city will ticket cars that are illegally parked during the prohibited times, and within minutes they may be towed off to an impound lots deep in the suburbs. Although this is supposed to generate income for the city, many, often poor people, are unnecessarily victimized by this practice.
Eventually tickets accrue and the owner of the vehicle may determine that it is not worth it to pay off the fines, towing charges and storage fees, just to get their car out of the impound lot.
In the meantime, most cities enable car owners to park their cars at the side of the road, sometimes for a fee, to take up space that would otherwise be used for vehicular traffic. This public space costs money to maintain, and it is paid through tax dollars.
Moreover, many European cities (in countries like Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, etc.) have purposely constructed or financed above ground or underground parking garages, and restricted vehicular access to certain streets by closing off retail and business areas and creating pedestrian malls. (Both solutions to deal with traffic, the congestion that parking creates, and other externalities).
As we move into the post COVID-19 world, where some progressive municipal councils and leadership have temporarily turned some downtown streets into pedestrian malls, and enabled restaurant owners to have temporary outdoor structures on the streets (and the inevitable increase in electric vehicles), now is a good time to reevaluate not just the role of mobility solutions, but where we allow vehicles to park, and what kinds of externalities this situation creates.
Photo Credit: Andrew Duthie
Parking Behind the Highland Park old municipal center
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/6671420425_ebd2414d82_c.jpg450799Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-04-06 19:21:572024-09-22 12:16:53Parking, power, and externalities
The social science fields, more specifically the academic departments in which they are located, the ones I know best, are funky beasts. Although there is a demand for scholars who work in a specific area to do interesting research, there is also often a blind loyalty to hiring candidates who have graduated in the social science of the hiring department.
Not only do we see this process in academic hiring in general, but when scholars apply for grant funding, we are frequently compelled to select a traditional field with which to associate our research proposal.
Why does this social science orthodoxy exist?
In some respects, I understand it. Earning a doctorate in a field is a way to rationalize a profession. In many respects, it makes hiring and the distribution of resources decisions easier.
And in some situations when an academic program wants an expert to teach a narrow set of courses or to lead a specific program, say for example sociological theory, it might make sense for that teacher to hold a Ph.D. in that field.
Some professors, often older ones, fall on the sword of tradition. They argue that we need to train a future generation of Sociologists, Anthropologists, etc., and in order to do this, all new hires must have a Ph.D. in that field. And if we fail to do this, we will somehow dilute the knowledge base. Really? Is that true? Very few of the undergraduates we teach and mentor (our proverbial bread and butter) end up becoming professional anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, etc. So who are we kidding? Maybe the gatekeepers are trying to maintain an element of purity in their chosen social science field? It’s hard to tell.
I suspect that there are other reasons why this orthodoxy exists. First, there appears to be a conviction that anyone a department hires must have a basic grounding in the discipline in order to best help students seeking degrees. For example, hiring committees want a new hire to be able to teach an introductory class and to understand and support all of the different sub-areas.
Second, some disciplines have outdated stereotypes about scholars from other disciplines. In the social sciences, for example, some Anthropologists think Sociologists lack awareness of cultural matters. Criminal Justice and Criminology folks often stereotype Sociologists as a bunch of postmodernist nutjobs, and Sociologists frequently assume that Criminal Justice is way too conservative, and the departments they work in are little more than so-called “cop shops.”
Third, the territorialism we witness is rooted in the history of academia neglecting and underfunding the social sciences. I think much of this problem is economic in nature. Majors such as Psychology and Criminology attract more students, which creates power struggles and resentment, intensifying stereotypes and occasionally inspiring Criminologists in departments of Sociology to break off and create their own departments. In the competition for scarce resources on campus, the more the Economists, Historians, Sociologists, etc. can claim fealty to their disciplines and depict other departments as encroaching on their territory, the greater the likelihood they can maintain their financial status quo.
The reality is that scan almost any piece of scholarship and you will notice that social scientists of all stripes are citing literature from other disciplines all the time. That’s how arguments are made and supported and that is how we push a discipline further.
What are the negative effects of maintaining disciplinary orthodoxy?
A handful of outcomes come to mind. To begin with, requiring job applicants to have a Ph.D. in a singular field significantly limits the pool of appropriate candidates. In turn, this promotes tunnel vision with respect to the kinds of people we hire, the subjects we study, and the knowledge that we impart on our students. This stance is therefore both a parochial and narrow-minded.
Moreover, this approach does a disservice to our students, who might benefit from the tutelage of instructors who do really interesting interdisciplinary research. At its extreme, requiring people to hold a Ph.D. in a specific discipline is claustrophobic and xenophobic. It prevents scholars from experimenting and exploring subjects and literature that could be beneficial to their work.
It is simplistic to assume that just because someone has earned a Ph.D. in a particular social science field that they are automatically qualified to teach introductory subjects in that field. Many Ph.D. graduates help professors publish papers, and end up only knowing a very narrow range of knowledge in a particular academic field.
Championing inter- and multidisciplinary research
In reality, gone are the days when scholars could flip through the dominant journal in their field to find out what the latest research had to say about particular social and political problems. This is where inter- or multidisciplinary approaches to problems and questions come into play. Chairs, deans, and everyone up to the presidents of respected universities, sing the praises of collaborative and interdisciplinary research. Sometimes resources are invested in this approach to knowledge building and instruction. Interdisciplinary teams are necessary for securing most major grants as well, recognizing the importance of interdisciplinary research to answer important questions.
This is perhaps why we have seen, over the past four decades, a proliferation of departments, schools and colleges of Public Policy. This also explains why the large commissions examining various public policy challenges try to draw people from different disciplines.
Even Google Scholar does not have pre-set disciplines and leaves it up to researchers to identify the field that they think is most appropriate.
If I had to go out on a limb, I would argue that some of the most significant scholarly research in the world is interdisciplinary, and finding answers to interesting questions is what motivates most academics, not “contributing to the literature” of sociology, economics, etc. As a researcher, if all you do is restrict yourself to the scholarship in your field, then you have essentially inherited a straightjacket that may not result in much except wasting a lot of your time. The programs that are interesting and exciting, and that appear to be gaining enrollments are interdisciplinary: ones that not only combine the social sciences, but humanities too.
Conclusion
In many respects, social science disciplines, from Anthropology to Sociology, are best seen as temporary homes to hang one’s hat. But when they start putting up barriers to entrance, like requiring a Ph.D. in a specific field or excluding people who do not have a Ph.D. in a particular field, or not letting someone conduct research unless it primarily draws from the literature in a particular fiend, things become more limited and less defensible.
Sure, at certain critical times, we are going to have to find a place to call our academic home, but because most universities are configured into subdivisions, such as departments, divisions, schools, and colleges, the blind allegiance to a single discipline is misplaced.
Photo by vhines200
“mayhem in the ring”
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/28289912483_258474b5e3_c.jpg534800Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-03-31 02:46:582024-09-22 12:23:42Why preferring individual social science disciplines is a bad practice: Two cheers for interdisciplinary approaches
Occasionally I hear and see the comment (also known as approach, axiom, principle, and statement), often in activist circles, that although somebody may be considered an expert on a subject (e.g., poverty, discrimination, criminal victimization, etc.), because they don’t have lived (or direct) experience of something (e.g., a problem, situation, series of events, persons, etc.), or they have not been significantly impacted, they are somehow unqualified to understand the problem, and their perceptions are suspect, not credible, or useless.
More damning, is the retort that the solutions and changes advocated by these “so-called experts,” should be not trusted and thus disregarded.
I believe that we are seeing an increase in this phenomenon (the dismissal of expert opinion that does not have the accompanied lived experience) in many academic domains such as criminal justice, disability studies, gender studies, racial and ethnic studies, social work, etc.
Enter the complementary principle of those who are closest to the problem, are in the best position to change it, as one of the frequent “solutions” to the failure to have people who have lived experience shaping the agendas of groups or constituencies that are negatively impacted.
This approach (i.e., those who are closest to the problem are in the best position to change it) is premised on the assumption that lived experience unequivocally imbues people with particular knowledge and insights and that they will be qualitatively better than the “so-called” experts to lead a relevant group, organization, social movement, etc.
Both of these axioms would be great, if only they were universally true.
Before continuing, both of these statements beg a number of questions including what is an expert, and who is doing the labelling, but this is a discussion best left for a different context.
Also, I’m not talking about cultural appropriation, nor am I referring to the situations such as the ones involving former George Washington University professor, Dr. Jessica Krug, nor former Spokane NAACP chapter president, Rachel Dolezal. In both of the latter cases these individuals, who were from white families, tried to pass themselves off as African-Americans.
Why are the two approaches summarized above suspect? There are many people who have lived experience, but were oblivious to the unique situations in which they were exposed, lack the ability to adequately analyze and communicate what they saw or experienced to a wider audience, or they don’t have any original insights. In other words, they do not have anything new to contribute to the debate (or our knowledge of a situation).
With respect to the last idea, this is why we are frequently exposed to the recycling or repackaging of so much information; the recounting of the same experiences, shared by others, with no new insights. How do we protect ourselves from this old wine in new bottles experience. That is where peer review research is supposed to sort all this out. (All the stuff that has been said already should be identified by qualified reviewers, communicated to the editors, and filtered back to the paper submitters, so that only new insights are evaluated and communicated).
With respect to the approach that those who are most affected are in the best position to solve the problem, one need not look further than the long history of numerous social movements both in the United States and elsewhere to see how many orgs stumbled and fell, and it was not because of outside leadership.
Often referred to as authenticity politics, many important social causes are grappling with issues of credibility and leadership. In some circles there has been a reification and romanticization of lived experience and this has led to group and movement conflict, paralysis and dissolution. In other words, organizations, big and small, are sometimes prevented from carrying out their mission because of this preoccupation. I encourage these groups to think more clearly about the choices they are making, and not fall prey to thinking in black and white terms.
I’m not suggesting that people with lived experience can’t assist our knowledge of a domain, or nagging social problem, nor am I arguing for a conservative or parochial approach to knowledge claims, policy and legal development, nor organizational leadership, but I am asking social justice groups to be careful about what are often simplistic approaches to deny the input of people who may in fact be experts without lived experience. Although difficult to balance, the perspectives of lived experience and the approach of those without it, can work synergistically to create stronger research, mentorship, and activism (including public policy).
Photo: “Group Meeting,” by Michael Frank Franz
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/15662925704_01d881e915_c.jpg533799Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2021-03-23 22:39:502025-01-18 17:02:58Be mindful of the “lived experience fallacy” and its cousin, “those who are closest to the problem are in the best position to change it”
Parking, power, and externalities
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIt’s a simple fact of life. People need and want to get places, and unless they walk everywhere, we need somewhere to temporarily or permanently store the objects that they use to assist them getting to their destinations.
Some of those items (e.g., bicycles, hover boards, razors, roller blades, and skateboards) are relatively easy to store, where as others (e.g., buses, cars, planes, and subways) are more difficult.
Over the past century, in modern cities, the horse and buggy gave way to public transit systems with buses, trams, streetcars, and subways and to private vehicles and taxis (and now Ubers, Lyfts, etc.), the latter of which dominate most urban landscapes. These vehicles are a blessing and a curse. They cost lots to operate, and create plenty of externalities (e.g., pollution, etc.).
If you are a driver and/or a pedestrian then at some point in time you are going to have to deal not just with vehicles in motion, but with parked cars. Parking a vehicle not only represents a place to temporarily store your valuable material possession, but this act is imbued with lots of other subtle considerations.
In many respects parking is often a contest, exchange, or game bounded by subtle forms of power, and contests over private and public urban space. This is played out and/or decided in questions like: where will we allow vehicles to park?; what types of vehicles will we permit to park?, when will we allow them to park?; should we charge them to park?, how much should this cost?, etc. etc.?
For example, when we talk about parking, we need to consider the size of the vehicle. This is especially noticeable when one travels outside of Canada and the United States. In general, it’s easier to park a car in European countries where the majority of cars are small versus the big gas guzzling cars on this side of the Atlantic.
Alternatively, many cities have very difficult to negotiate street parking restrictions at certain times of the day. In the morning during rush hour, the city will ticket cars that are illegally parked during the prohibited times, and within minutes they may be towed off to an impound lots deep in the suburbs. Although this is supposed to generate income for the city, many, often poor people, are unnecessarily victimized by this practice.
Eventually tickets accrue and the owner of the vehicle may determine that it is not worth it to pay off the fines, towing charges and storage fees, just to get their car out of the impound lot.
In the meantime, most cities enable car owners to park their cars at the side of the road, sometimes for a fee, to take up space that would otherwise be used for vehicular traffic. This public space costs money to maintain, and it is paid through tax dollars.
Moreover, many European cities (in countries like Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, etc.) have purposely constructed or financed above ground or underground parking garages, and restricted vehicular access to certain streets by closing off retail and business areas and creating pedestrian malls. (Both solutions to deal with traffic, the congestion that parking creates, and other externalities).
As we move into the post COVID-19 world, where some progressive municipal councils and leadership have temporarily turned some downtown streets into pedestrian malls, and enabled restaurant owners to have temporary outdoor structures on the streets (and the inevitable increase in electric vehicles), now is a good time to reevaluate not just the role of mobility solutions, but where we allow vehicles to park, and what kinds of externalities this situation creates.
Photo Credit: Andrew Duthie
Parking Behind the Highland Park old municipal center
Why preferring individual social science disciplines is a bad practice: Two cheers for interdisciplinary approaches
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThe social science fields, more specifically the academic departments in which they are located, the ones I know best, are funky beasts. Although there is a demand for scholars who work in a specific area to do interesting research, there is also often a blind loyalty to hiring candidates who have graduated in the social science of the hiring department.
Not only do we see this process in academic hiring in general, but when scholars apply for grant funding, we are frequently compelled to select a traditional field with which to associate our research proposal.
Why does this social science orthodoxy exist?
In some respects, I understand it. Earning a doctorate in a field is a way to rationalize a profession. In many respects, it makes hiring and the distribution of resources decisions easier.
And in some situations when an academic program wants an expert to teach a narrow set of courses or to lead a specific program, say for example sociological theory, it might make sense for that teacher to hold a Ph.D. in that field.
Some professors, often older ones, fall on the sword of tradition. They argue that we need to train a future generation of Sociologists, Anthropologists, etc., and in order to do this, all new hires must have a Ph.D. in that field. And if we fail to do this, we will somehow dilute the knowledge base. Really? Is that true? Very few of the undergraduates we teach and mentor (our proverbial bread and butter) end up becoming professional anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, etc. So who are we kidding? Maybe the gatekeepers are trying to maintain an element of purity in their chosen social science field? It’s hard to tell.
I suspect that there are other reasons why this orthodoxy exists. First, there appears to be a conviction that anyone a department hires must have a basic grounding in the discipline in order to best help students seeking degrees. For example, hiring committees want a new hire to be able to teach an introductory class and to understand and support all of the different sub-areas.
Second, some disciplines have outdated stereotypes about scholars from other disciplines. In the social sciences, for example, some Anthropologists think Sociologists lack awareness of cultural matters. Criminal Justice and Criminology folks often stereotype Sociologists as a bunch of postmodernist nutjobs, and Sociologists frequently assume that Criminal Justice is way too conservative, and the departments they work in are little more than so-called “cop shops.”
Third, the territorialism we witness is rooted in the history of academia neglecting and underfunding the social sciences. I think much of this problem is economic in nature. Majors such as Psychology and Criminology attract more students, which creates power struggles and resentment, intensifying stereotypes and occasionally inspiring Criminologists in departments of Sociology to break off and create their own departments. In the competition for scarce resources on campus, the more the Economists, Historians, Sociologists, etc. can claim fealty to their disciplines and depict other departments as encroaching on their territory, the greater the likelihood they can maintain their financial status quo.
The reality is that scan almost any piece of scholarship and you will notice that social scientists of all stripes are citing literature from other disciplines all the time. That’s how arguments are made and supported and that is how we push a discipline further.
What are the negative effects of maintaining disciplinary orthodoxy?
A handful of outcomes come to mind. To begin with, requiring job applicants to have a Ph.D. in a singular field significantly limits the pool of appropriate candidates. In turn, this promotes tunnel vision with respect to the kinds of people we hire, the subjects we study, and the knowledge that we impart on our students. This stance is therefore both a parochial and narrow-minded.
Moreover, this approach does a disservice to our students, who might benefit from the tutelage of instructors who do really interesting interdisciplinary research. At its extreme, requiring people to hold a Ph.D. in a specific discipline is claustrophobic and xenophobic. It prevents scholars from experimenting and exploring subjects and literature that could be beneficial to their work.
It is simplistic to assume that just because someone has earned a Ph.D. in a particular social science field that they are automatically qualified to teach introductory subjects in that field. Many Ph.D. graduates help professors publish papers, and end up only knowing a very narrow range of knowledge in a particular academic field.
Championing inter- and multidisciplinary research
In reality, gone are the days when scholars could flip through the dominant journal in their field to find out what the latest research had to say about particular social and political problems. This is where inter- or multidisciplinary approaches to problems and questions come into play. Chairs, deans, and everyone up to the presidents of respected universities, sing the praises of collaborative and interdisciplinary research. Sometimes resources are invested in this approach to knowledge building and instruction. Interdisciplinary teams are necessary for securing most major grants as well, recognizing the importance of interdisciplinary research to answer important questions.
This is perhaps why we have seen, over the past four decades, a proliferation of departments, schools and colleges of Public Policy. This also explains why the large commissions examining various public policy challenges try to draw people from different disciplines.
Even Google Scholar does not have pre-set disciplines and leaves it up to researchers to identify the field that they think is most appropriate.
If I had to go out on a limb, I would argue that some of the most significant scholarly research in the world is interdisciplinary, and finding answers to interesting questions is what motivates most academics, not “contributing to the literature” of sociology, economics, etc. As a researcher, if all you do is restrict yourself to the scholarship in your field, then you have essentially inherited a straightjacket that may not result in much except wasting a lot of your time. The programs that are interesting and exciting, and that appear to be gaining enrollments are interdisciplinary: ones that not only combine the social sciences, but humanities too.
Conclusion
In many respects, social science disciplines, from Anthropology to Sociology, are best seen as temporary homes to hang one’s hat. But when they start putting up barriers to entrance, like requiring a Ph.D. in a specific field or excluding people who do not have a Ph.D. in a particular field, or not letting someone conduct research unless it primarily draws from the literature in a particular fiend, things become more limited and less defensible.
Sure, at certain critical times, we are going to have to find a place to call our academic home, but because most universities are configured into subdivisions, such as departments, divisions, schools, and colleges, the blind allegiance to a single discipline is misplaced.
Photo by vhines200
“mayhem in the ring”
Be mindful of the “lived experience fallacy” and its cousin, “those who are closest to the problem are in the best position to change it”
/by Jeffrey Ian RossOccasionally I hear and see the comment (also known as approach, axiom, principle, and statement), often in activist circles, that although somebody may be considered an expert on a subject (e.g., poverty, discrimination, criminal victimization, etc.), because they don’t have lived (or direct) experience of something (e.g., a problem, situation, series of events, persons, etc.), or they have not been significantly impacted, they are somehow unqualified to understand the problem, and their perceptions are suspect, not credible, or useless.
More damning, is the retort that the solutions and changes advocated by these “so-called experts,” should be not trusted and thus disregarded.
I believe that we are seeing an increase in this phenomenon (the dismissal of expert opinion that does not have the accompanied lived experience) in many academic domains such as criminal justice, disability studies, gender studies, racial and ethnic studies, social work, etc.
Enter the complementary principle of those who are closest to the problem, are in the best position to change it, as one of the frequent “solutions” to the failure to have people who have lived experience shaping the agendas of groups or constituencies that are negatively impacted.
This approach (i.e., those who are closest to the problem are in the best position to change it) is premised on the assumption that lived experience unequivocally imbues people with particular knowledge and insights and that they will be qualitatively better than the “so-called” experts to lead a relevant group, organization, social movement, etc.
Both of these axioms would be great, if only they were universally true.
Before continuing, both of these statements beg a number of questions including what is an expert, and who is doing the labelling, but this is a discussion best left for a different context.
Also, I’m not talking about cultural appropriation, nor am I referring to the situations such as the ones involving former George Washington University professor, Dr. Jessica Krug, nor former Spokane NAACP chapter president, Rachel Dolezal. In both of the latter cases these individuals, who were from white families, tried to pass themselves off as African-Americans.
Why are the two approaches summarized above suspect? There are many people who have lived experience, but were oblivious to the unique situations in which they were exposed, lack the ability to adequately analyze and communicate what they saw or experienced to a wider audience, or they don’t have any original insights. In other words, they do not have anything new to contribute to the debate (or our knowledge of a situation).
With respect to the last idea, this is why we are frequently exposed to the recycling or repackaging of so much information; the recounting of the same experiences, shared by others, with no new insights. How do we protect ourselves from this old wine in new bottles experience. That is where peer review research is supposed to sort all this out. (All the stuff that has been said already should be identified by qualified reviewers, communicated to the editors, and filtered back to the paper submitters, so that only new insights are evaluated and communicated).
With respect to the approach that those who are most affected are in the best position to solve the problem, one need not look further than the long history of numerous social movements both in the United States and elsewhere to see how many orgs stumbled and fell, and it was not because of outside leadership.
Often referred to as authenticity politics, many important social causes are grappling with issues of credibility and leadership. In some circles there has been a reification and romanticization of lived experience and this has led to group and movement conflict, paralysis and dissolution. In other words, organizations, big and small, are sometimes prevented from carrying out their mission because of this preoccupation. I encourage these groups to think more clearly about the choices they are making, and not fall prey to thinking in black and white terms.
I’m not suggesting that people with lived experience can’t assist our knowledge of a domain, or nagging social problem, nor am I arguing for a conservative or parochial approach to knowledge claims, policy and legal development, nor organizational leadership, but I am asking social justice groups to be careful about what are often simplistic approaches to deny the input of people who may in fact be experts without lived experience. Although difficult to balance, the perspectives of lived experience and the approach of those without it, can work synergistically to create stronger research, mentorship, and activism (including public policy).
Photo: “Group Meeting,” by Michael Frank Franz