Science Slam: Alice MillerMacPhee

UComm Author

04/05/2018 Added

65 Plays

Description

Alice MillerMacPhee, sociology

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:02.700]Two years down in the sociology PhD program,
[00:00:07.470]and we all know what that means.
[00:00:10.080]It's time for comprehensive exams.
[00:00:13.660]That fun little exercise where we read 7,000 pages
[00:00:18.350]in a very short amount of time,
[00:00:20.120]remembering only the substantive bits,
[00:00:22.870]and who said what to who when and in which contexts.
[00:00:27.670]I am, broadly speaking, a scholar of inequality,
[00:00:30.860]so I am trying to read as much
[00:00:33.290]as humanly possible on inequality in education.
[00:00:37.210]I am trying to read as much as humanly
[00:00:39.610]possible on inequality in families.
[00:00:42.900]I'm trying to read as much as humanly possible
[00:00:46.930]on inequality and stratification in the workplace.
[00:00:50.430]And then I get to this really cool category of reading.
[00:00:54.870]You know, theories of inequality.
[00:00:57.920]And for people, as scientists,
[00:01:00.180]theories are those things that help us explain the world.
[00:01:04.320]Ideally.
[00:01:05.490]Maybe give us a little bit of an inkling
[00:01:07.470]about what to expect.
[00:01:09.120]And maybe even a little bit of predictive power.
[00:01:13.100]And it is at this moment I feel compelled,
[00:01:16.030]that is, I must say,
[00:01:17.950]public service announcement, correlation is not causation.
[00:01:22.430](audience laughs)
[00:01:24.110]Back to theories.
[00:01:25.720]I come across this word intersectionality.
[00:01:29.700]Anybody heard of it?
[00:01:32.480]God, full house!
[00:01:33.700]We have too!
[00:01:34.890]So, I'm trying to figure out what it is
[00:01:38.040]sociologists and social scientists mean
[00:01:40.590]when we use this word inequality.
[00:01:43.060]I learned that it was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, 1989.
[00:01:47.670]And it's something about understanding
[00:01:49.840]interlocking, overlapping systems
[00:01:52.730]of oppression and discrimination,
[00:01:54.520]and how these impact people differently
[00:01:57.750]depending on where they are positioned.
[00:02:00.260]So that is to say, black men and white men
[00:02:04.090]don't have the same experience.
[00:02:05.510]White men and white women don't have the same experience.
[00:02:08.100]And white women and black women do not either.
[00:02:11.930]I further read Patricia Hill Collins, 1990,
[00:02:16.070]again calling us to look at how these systems
[00:02:18.950]overlapped and intersect, and we should in fact
[00:02:22.870]be moving those people at the margins,
[00:02:25.070]those people with the least power, the least privilege,
[00:02:27.870]positioned at all of these intersections
[00:02:30.490]to the center of our research.
[00:02:32.850]So that we may have a more accurate
[00:02:34.900]understanding of systems of inequality,
[00:02:38.030]of power, and of privilege.
[00:02:40.010]Okay, 500 of those 7,000 pages done.
[00:02:44.240]I think I've got a general idea.
[00:02:46.410]Comprehensive exam day comes.
[00:02:48.550]I sit in the computer lab with
[00:02:50.100]some of my fellow grad students.
[00:02:52.100]Type up nonstop everything I can possibly
[00:02:54.326]pull out of my mind about stratification and inequality.
[00:02:57.960]Two short breaks, five o'clock hits, the exam's over.
[00:03:01.010]Done.
[00:03:01.843]Check the box.
[00:03:02.940]Onto the next thing.
[00:03:05.020]You know.
[00:03:05.853]The dissertation.
[00:03:06.686]Totally manageable.
[00:03:07.810]Small potatoes compared to the comprehensive exam.
[00:03:11.030]This idea of intersectionality is still
[00:03:12.960]sort of knocking around in my mind,
[00:03:14.970]but I think it's on the exam.
[00:03:16.990]It's done, it's over.
[00:03:18.290]I don't need to be bothered with this idea
[00:03:20.980]that seems to pop up sometimes in sociology.
[00:03:24.150]Not important anymore.
[00:03:26.570]I am, first and foremost, a scholar of social movements.
[00:03:30.750]So, in trying to come up with
[00:03:32.850]this research question for my dissertation
[00:03:35.770]that I think is going to be so manageable,
[00:03:39.140]I start looking at what activists and organizations
[00:03:42.480]and social movements are doing today.
[00:03:44.850]There's this thing that happened in January of this year
[00:03:47.870]that in fact happened in January of 2017.
[00:03:50.750]You all may have heard of it.
[00:03:52.190]The Women's March?
[00:03:55.230]Okay.
[00:03:56.270]Thank you, thank you!
[00:03:57.850]The organizers intentionally invoke this word,
[00:04:01.110]intersectionality, to talk about the different
[00:04:03.610]experiences that women are having.
[00:04:05.760]And how it is crucial that we understand
[00:04:08.680]how those experiences are different.
[00:04:11.650]Okay.
[00:04:13.330]I'm also paying attention to this
[00:04:15.020]other movement that's happening.
[00:04:16.480]You all may have heard of it.
[00:04:17.760]The movement for Black lives?
[00:04:21.310]Black Lives Matter organization,
[00:04:23.290]part of their platform is centering trans women of color.
[00:04:28.490]I'm also reading about this organization, BYP100.
[00:04:31.620]It's a grassroots Black Lives Matter organization.
[00:04:34.650]And they say that they are explicitly using
[00:04:36.910]a Black, queer, feminist lens to understand
[00:04:40.420]systems of oppression and discrimination.
[00:04:43.590]Gosh, this sounds like intersectionality.
[00:04:47.400]And then how about those Dreamers?
[00:04:51.220]United we Dream is a national organization,
[00:04:53.870]and part of their platform is explicitly talking about
[00:04:56.930]how women who are immigrants are disproportionately
[00:05:00.260]impacted by immigration policies.
[00:05:02.390]And another one of their pillars is looking at
[00:05:05.010]how LGBTQ immigrants are differentially
[00:05:08.660]disproportionally impacted by policies.
[00:05:11.960]Gosh, you all know what this sounds like by now, right?
[00:05:15.417]Intersectionality.
[00:05:17.980]So, I'm realizing, it's everywhere.
[00:05:22.220]But what is it?
[00:05:24.700]And this is where my story as a scientist,
[00:05:28.000]of how I really feel like a scientist,
[00:05:30.250]gets really interesting.
[00:05:31.880]I decide that I have to delve into what this idea is.
[00:05:35.760]I need to understand what it means.
[00:05:37.700]I need to understand how researchers are doing it.
[00:05:40.830]And for me, I begin to feel like a scientist
[00:05:43.980]when I can challenge my discipline.
[00:05:47.360]And I do mean my discipline.
[00:05:49.130]When I can make an informed statement
[00:05:51.520]about what I've read and what I've researched,
[00:05:53.550]and sort of put out a call to my fellow scientists.
[00:05:57.190]So.
[00:05:59.640]Warning, blasphemy ahead.
[00:06:03.380]Sociologists are not always as clear as they should be
[00:06:08.650]when they use this word intersectionality.
[00:06:11.260]Is it a framework?
[00:06:12.093]Is it a concept?
[00:06:12.926]Is it a term?
[00:06:13.759]Is it a theory?
[00:06:14.900]You don't have to take my word for this,
[00:06:17.120]preeminent scholar Patricia Hill Collins,
[00:06:19.500]2015 wrote a piece Intersectionality's Definitional Dilemma,
[00:06:23.970]where she's calling us out about how
[00:06:27.110]we don't clearly operationalize,
[00:06:29.300]that is define what it is we're talking about.
[00:06:31.910]And as I think most of the scientists
[00:06:33.610]in the room can agree, operationalization, totally vital.
[00:06:38.410]Clearly explaining what we're doing,
[00:06:39.950]so that our work can be replicable,
[00:06:42.030]and we can build a shared knowledge base.
[00:06:44.450]Vital.
[00:06:45.420]One of the most important things
[00:06:46.820]that Collins has to say in this piece though,
[00:06:50.140]is intersectionality can be understood as a critical praxis.
[00:06:55.650]That is, something that activists are doing.
[00:07:00.500]Intersectionality?
[00:07:02.030]It's an activist term.
[00:07:05.320]We are social scientists using this activist term,
[00:07:09.740]and I am bound and determined to figure out
[00:07:12.140]what it is we're doing with this term.
[00:07:14.930]I find, in Collins' piece, that the first time
[00:07:18.350]we really get an idea of intersectionality
[00:07:20.077]is the Combahee River Collective, 1977,
[00:07:23.420]written by Black, lesbian feminists about how we must
[00:07:26.490]understand interlocking systems of oppression.
[00:07:29.040]That is, people are positioned
[00:07:30.450]and experience racism differently,
[00:07:32.100]sexism differently, classism differently,
[00:07:34.550]and there are a lot of others.
[00:07:36.040]And it at this point that I have to lament
[00:07:39.510]that I don't have the time to give
[00:07:41.100]a full history of intersectionality.
[00:07:43.200]Scratch that.
[00:07:45.230]Giving the full history and analysis of intersectionality
[00:07:47.980]is beyond the scope of this presentation.
[00:07:51.630]The good news is we have a department
[00:07:54.890]and a degree plan here at the university
[00:07:57.340]which are guaranteed to learn a little bit about this.
[00:07:59.650]Please see sociology.
[00:08:02.810]So, it is in learning that this term comes from activists,
[00:08:06.690]and then has somehow been, dare I say, co-opted
[00:08:11.600]by some scientists to mean something different.
[00:08:15.180]And as a scientist now that I'm firmly grounded in my field,
[00:08:19.450]I feel that I can stand up here and stake a claim
[00:08:23.070]about the science that I do, and as a scientist.
[00:08:25.670]And that is that we must cease the practice
[00:08:29.140]of separating theory from practice.
[00:08:32.300]We must cease creating this hierarchy
[00:08:34.512]of what is more important and how we understand the world.
[00:08:38.010]We must continue to look to activists,
[00:08:40.900]who are out on the streets today organizing,
[00:08:43.310]using this as a way to build coalitions
[00:08:46.859]and frame their goals and tactics,
[00:08:51.180]just as it did come out of activists in the 1970s,
[00:08:54.650]and somehow, I would argue, got lost in translation
[00:08:59.070]through the process of social science.
[00:09:01.300]So, in concluding today, I will stake
[00:09:05.370]my claim as a scientist and state
[00:09:08.470]not only should our science be empirically
[00:09:13.080]observable and verifiable, not only should we be
[00:09:17.180]painstakingly clear in what it is we mean,
[00:09:20.520]so that our work may be replicable
[00:09:22.850]and build a shared knowledge base,
[00:09:25.550]but we as scientists should be studying
[00:09:28.080]theory and practice together.
[00:09:31.660]We must do better at centering those people
[00:09:35.920]at the margins, so we many more fully understand
[00:09:40.410]how systems of inequality, discrimination
[00:09:43.470]and oppression operate in this world.
[00:09:45.250]And that indeed if we do these things,
[00:09:48.570]we might just learn how we as scientists
[00:09:52.140]can make those systems of inequality
[00:09:53.980]just a little bit less detrimental.
[00:09:57.080]Thank you.
[00:09:58.119](audience applauds)

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Science Slam: Alice MillerMacPhee

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments