Recently I was talking about how much I enjoyed On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. I knew there was some controversy over the book, but I didn’t realize how much. I actually assumed she was a journalist, but it turns out she is a sociologist and some sociologists think they are not supposed to write books like that. (Later though, the article says that journalists have criticized her and sociologists have defended her, so I am a little confused there.) I don’t think I know any sociologists, or a lot about them. Once I knew an anthropologist, and I asked him how he was different from a sociologist, but he just laughed and never answered my question. The problem, some say, is that she got too close to her subjects, was too quick to repeat everything they told her, and reinforced stereotypes. On the last, I think that is completely false. If anything, she does a lot to humanize and find redeeming qualities in people who do some risky and violent things. As for the way she got personally involved with her subjects, that is what makes the story so engaging. I think ultimately it is a story told from a certain point of view, and you have to keep that point of view in mind almost as though you were reading a novel. Whether that is good academic sociology or not I wouldn’t know, but I enjoyed the book.

By the way, Alice Goffman did a TED talk which is more or less a summary of the book.