Being real in the field – an interview with Nikki Jones

Listen to PI social science editor Nikki Jones in conversation with sociologist Karen Sternheimer about the sometimes strange relationship between an ethnographic researcher and the neighborhood she’s studying. Nikki was in the field for three years for her first book, Between Good and Ghetto, and lived in the Fillmore neighborhood of San Francisco for three years for her forthcoming book, The Hustle: Why it’s Hard to Make Good in the New Inner City. Nikki is also producing a short film, The Camera Rolls, the story of one man’s decade-long effort to document daily life in a tough San Francisco neighborhood. Look for the film on PI the coming weeks.

Poor Choices

Two jobs and two degrees – and still not making enough to cover the necessities. Mary Keck asks Ron Paul and other critics of the modern poor’s “luxuries”: is she undeserving of life’s small pleasures? Keck is a professor of English and Gender Studies as well as an associate editor of Southern Indiana Review. As a freelance journalist and fiction writer, she explores issues of class, labor, and gender in contemporary American life.

Unfreedom Update

The number of incarcerated people in the United States decreased slightly in 2010. Does that reflect a decreasing desire to lock people up? A drop in crime? Philip Cohen considers these questions and takes a look at the 2010 numbers in two great graphs. Philip is a sociologist at the University of Maryland, College Park. He blogs at Family Inequality.

Color Us Invisible

By Mignon Moore

LGBT people of color are simultaneously present and excluded in the neighborhoods where they live and in mainstream LGBT organizations. They might be more active in promoting LGBT advocacy efforts if they felt those efforts included their voices and incorporated more of the issues that are important to them.

Goodbye from The Public Intellectual

The Public Intellectual has been for us a fascinating experiment in bringing academic work to a general audience. We are very proud of the writing that has appeared on the site. We have been heartened by the support of our readers and the generosity of the writers who have worked with us since our launch last year. We have decided, however, that the project should end.