Bloggingheads TV with Douglas Massey

by Will Wilkinson on January 15, 2008

Speaking of structural barriers to the exercise of liberty, here I am talking with Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey about his book Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. If you think serious racial discrimination has dried up these days, try Chapter 3: “Reworking the Color Line.” It’s full of evidence of continuing labor market and housing discrimination, and is one of the the most depressing things I’ve read in a while. I disagree with a good bit of what Massey takes to be the upshot of all this in his book, but I was glad we were able to find so much to agree about it in our chat.

TGGP

I was sort of joking about "catching" socialism from a sociologist, but more seriously I doubt sociology amenable to libertarian influence. Economics has its origins among the classical liberals while sociology stems from Durkheim. Even during the early 20th century before Keynes the thought of Marshall and Knight was dominant. The folks at LvMI like to point out that Fisher supported prohibition as evidence for the perfidy of non-Austrian economists, but Fisher himself lamented that he couldn't find any other economists to support him on that issue. Keynes himself was more of a welfare-statist than outright socialist who thought he was saving capitalism from itself. During the New Deal the most meddlesome "technocrats" were generally lawyers rather than economists. Caplan has a good anecdote here about the contrast between liberal economists and lawyers in the Carter administration. The economists you mentioned worked in pre-existing schools of thought (Chicago & Austria) which don't really exist for a libertarian hoping to go into sociology. Sociology is also more characteristically a creature of academia. There are plenty of jobs for people with econ degrees in the private sector but that is not so much the case for sociology. Finally, the "economic imperialism" of Becker allows economists to use their toolkit to study phenomena normally considered part of sociology, so abandoning the field isn't much of a loss there.

Micha Ghertner

Why abandon sociology to the socialists, TGGP? Sure, the field may be dominated by them, but the same could be said about the field of economics at the beginning of the 20th century. That didn't stop Mises, Friedman, and Hayek from entering the field as a minority and turning it around for the better.

I wrote about my experience with academic sociology a few days ago.

One personality type...is a certain sort of vulgar individualist--the kind who loudly and unironically proclaims, "There is no such thing as society!"--and refuses to acknowledge the profound and all-encompassing impact society can have on structuring the way we interact with and understand the world around us. I used to be this worst sort of vulgar individualist, and when faced with overwhelming evidence that contradicted my mistaken beliefs about the relationship between an individual and society, I became terribly worried that my entire ideological worldview was at risk of collapse. It wasn't, of course; I merely needed to reexamine and modify my beliefs about sociology, and once I did that, my normative beliefs were that much stronger for it.

TGGP

If you hang out with sociologists often enough you'll catch socialism. I'd watch out if I were you.

In the comments at another blog I expressed surprise that low-income whites were more likely to live near high income people than low-income blacks. I had been under the impression that residential segregation was mostly an economic phenomena. I haven't read Massey's book, so what are the non-economic barriers (ignoring the issue of immigration)?