Interview 1

Meryem R. Tasbilek

Senior Seminar in SOC

09.15.2014 from 1-2:15 pm

1. What were the specific experiences in your life that drew you Sociology?

(I asked this and this type of questions with some personal background supports. Before I went to the interviews, I reread the instructors’ autobiographies from the department’s internet site. By this way, I personalize the questions with their educational history. For instance, for the first one, I learned that the professor studied Marketing as his undergraduate degree. I asked that what brought you to Sociology from Marketing. etc. By this way, the conversation is more comfortable and I feel like they are happy to recognize that I spent some efforts to learn some information about them before I meet with them.) *These answers were written as incomplete sentences. I summarize them from my notes. For the subject of this interview, I will use “A” when I need to mention his name.

The professor responded me this way: His father was a glassblower and his mother was working in a bakery. One of his brothers went to 2-year College. He did not think a lot about his bachelor major. One of his mentor friends was also studying a similar major. However, during the last semester of the university, he took one Early Childhood Development Class as a part of Honor program’s requirement. The female instructor of the class was very sensitive person who had also a lot of passion to be part of some social changes. She was trying to do some good projects for Native American tribes, too. On day, in the class, she said that she was raped. “A” was shocked and deeply affected by the information and the way she shared the experience. “A” was also impressed because of confidence of his instructor. He was getting emotional while he was sharing this part of his experience. He told me that in his family and close relatives such as aunts and including his father, there are many sexually and violently abused people. Their experiences influenced his life, too. For this common point, he went to his instructor’s office to mention that he was touched by what she said. His first reaction was masculine according to him. He wanted to save her somehow or at least decrease some part of her pain by saying some good stuff. He had a deep empathy because of his family members’ experiences. At that time, he wanted to do something about these kinds of things that have been happening in the society. This was the first trigger for him about Sociology. In addition, with his one of the cousin, he is the first generation who were able to go 4-year University.

(During our conversation, I link this question with the second one.)

2. When did you know “your place” in sociology? (Areas of study B.A./M.A./Ph.D.)

(In your biography, I read that you are very interested in Intersections of gender, power and violence. One of the main interests of you that captured my attention was Academic Masculinity. I guess we can say that this is a type of Epistemic Monopolization, too. How did you end up with these specific interests?)

The instructor A did not go to graduate school for Sociology directly. He said that first he worked for a company that was selling playground equipment. They were also working with public parks. While he was working with public services and in the office, his work environments seemed to him so racist and sexist. He was aware of these at some point, but it was worse and bolder than that he get used to it. He emphasized that he was practicing some of those discriminative actions, too, but even with this reality, the common atmosphere was too much for him. The division of labor was extremely gendered and the language was so racist. The workers were all white and they are talking about African Americans a lot with racist ways. It disturbed him a lot and leaded him to think about these kinds of issues more often. On day, one of his roommates told him that Sociology seems like a good for him. He opened a Sociology book and was very impressed about the topics such as racism, rape, gander and masculinity and so forth. He thought that this is very interesting. I can study all these things and this can be my professional job.

Moreover, after a while during our conversation he also shared some old job experiences as a waiter in a restaurant that I though it is better to place those information under this question. When he was at graduate school he worked as a waiter and other working partners, waiters were overwhelmingly sharing their sexual violence experiences. These affected him a lot about shaping his Sociology interests, too.

3. What was missing from your sociology education?

He said that it is a nice question and let me think about. While he was thinking, I said everything is incomplete and he said that that is true. He responded back by emphasizing that Sociology can be a good tool to create some radical change, but so far, there is nothing like this. The scholars publish some articles, but who is going to read these. The academia has a problem about linking themselves to public. Sociologists have paradox by reading critical ideas, but not taking actions. It is hard to create balance between activism and academia. We generally only publish articles. In addition, it is hard to do both in this Capitalist system.

At one point, we were talking about social progress and he said that having gays and ethnic diversity in the army is not a progress, because they are still bombarding civilians. For the victims of the war, it does not matter if the soldiers are multi-cultural, hetero, or homosexually diverse. I liked this statement a lot.

4. What drew you to teach at NEIU?

5. What keeps you continuing to teach at NEIU?

(I asked these two questions together to not bother the conversation by cutting it from the middle very quickly.)

He mentioned that the student profile is very effective for him to be here and continue here. First, because of his partner’s occupation who is a ballerina and artist they lived in New York first, but then they came here. Even though, this university has many problems, too he likes to be here.

I asked him, how did/does his economic class background, his family roots affects his experience in the academia?

He said that even though he has not have working class identity, he came from a working class family and with this, he has more flexible and free perspective about formal education and academia’s problematic rituals, rules, reactions, etc. He does not take all the privilege too seriously which generally makes people limited. Being a “professional” is a problematic thing, too.

During the conversation, I switched another question’s place and added to this dialog because it was useful to link based on the way we discuss. Based on the conversations, sometimes I asked these questions indirectly.

9. What do you think is missing from sociology? OR What about sociology misses the mark?

While we talk about the previous issues, at one point he mentions that Foucault says, “They do not call anything Disciplines without a reason.” I really liked this quotes. It enriches the dialog about the formal education conversation. The system link Sociologist to its organism by this systematic education and Science Disciplines. It disciplines us by several ways even if we resist and critique the system these were some points from our conversation. The interrelations with some majors are monopolized. We need more departments to work together. He also emphasizes the problem of gendered and racist Sociology canon when we talked about the masculinity in academia.

10. What has/hasn’t changed within the department since you’ve started teaching Sociology at NEIU? And would you have attended NEIU with its current administration and department/course offerings for your own education?

He said that being here helped me to shape myself and committed to justice. He took the question more personally than evaluate the university. Because of the way conversation goes, I sometimes altered the order of the questions. Because of this, we already talked about some changes and problems while he was talking about the advantages and disadvantages of tenure policy. I did not re-ask this question to correct him.

Somehow, we also talked about campus atmosphere and ROTC classes and his Anti-Militarist interest, which I was familiar from our class experiences with him. He emphasizes that some of the university embers says that we need to support veterans on campus, but I think we should not do this by opening this type of classes. How about not reminding them their militarist background at least on campus and not sending more young people to the army?! This is one of the best support option I guess. I agree with him.

7. Please name/define your approach/theoretical stance in Sociology. Conflict V. Functionalism?

Conflict.

We had a long conversation, but the most important part was about the dominant power’s reactions about/against Sociology or Humanity departments. The system constantly tries to eliminate these majors or at least decrease their power and economic opportunities; because they produce, critical thinking is which compel the system.

8. Name your sociological influences. (Sociologists, Philosophers, friends, family, aspects of society, personal motivations, movies---ANYTHING)

He gave several names and showed several books as examples from his library. We talked about them fairly. Such as White Racism’s author Joe Feagen, Particia Colums, J. Williams. A. Merry Romeo, Denise Danicidie (?). He gave one article name which was about Burgeoning with Patriarchic Society, which I could not catch very well, and need to search. R. W. Connell was very important for him, too. Many massive scholars were important models for him as he mentioned.

He mentioned that she is a Transsexual woman (Australian, elite). I said that I guess by this way, she can have richer observations from both genders to use them in her intellectual products. We laughed.

10. Do you think Sociology could benefit from an interdisciplinary approach? How could Sociology influence other disciplines? What could Sociology gain from other disciplines? Which disciplines would be most beneficial? Is there a discipline you feel might be anti-Sociology?

He said that there are interdisciplinary studies, but it is weird that Women Studies are from one point excluded form Sociology. It is mostly included in Human Studies. When he was working for the Sociology text book, he was surprised that most of the female researchers were hidden in the Human Studies archives. Generally female researchers have hard time to break some rigid labels about them and this creates hard time to have label as Sociologist. Mostly they have labeled as Political Activist or Feminist and so forth.

11. Have you ever experienced discrimination (glass ceiling, ivory tower, etc.) in your career? If so, would you mind talking about it? Has this experience changed your Sociology career focus or strengthened your original focus?

He responded this question unexpectedly. He said that because he is interested in masculinity in academia and he focuses on many abounded issues by males, he receive some privileged especially from female Sociologist and some part of general Sociology academia members. So he feels lucky about it rather than experiencing some specific type of discriminations. However, sometimes these interests cause some isolations from male scholars, too as he mentioned during the interview. Overall, he emphasizes his situation in academia as positive, prompt and advantaged.

13. Do you think tenure allows professors to be freer in their work or does it promote restriction? How has that freedom/restriction manifested itself for you? How do you feel about this?

This was my favorite question to ask. When I asked this question, I mentioned that maybe I am mistaken, but I link this tenure policy with Marx’ alienated labor argument and its sub-results. I also asked his opinion about this possible relationship. Because sometimes it seemed to me that it is a kind of pacifier tool and a kind of hush money. When the professors are oppressed for several years about their job security and their places in the academia by not having the advantages of being tenure or tenure track position, after waiting all of these years without emphasizing their ideas not totally freely, this must change their reactions, bravery and personality, too.

He said that it is true from one point same as the conditions and functions of the unions. The unions normally need to be the negotiators between the working class and Capitalists, but mostly they are not working completely this way. Unfortunately, they reproduce the system, too. Getting a professionalized is a problem, too for academicians. The problems start from education process. 15 years we spend some time to be professionalized in a major with a graduate training and its side effects are hard to be break down when we have more power to emphasize our ideas. On the other hand, it is better than nothing is. They can use it for some good purposes.