Academic Identity
I am assistant professor of Sociology at Barnard College. My book (and my dissertation research) is a comparative study of technology and futures trading, an ethnography of open outcry and electronic traders. My current research is on how art specialists price cultural commodities, particularly how categories and commensuration work in the secondary/resale fine arts market. I teach courses in economic sociology, organizations, and gender.
Professional Identity
I occasionally consult, focusing on organizational change, the future of technology and financial markets, and environmental markets. I do strategic assessments of markets, technology and organizational design, with qualitative and quantitative components. If you are interested, please email me.
Personal Identity
I grew up outside Chicago, and went to school(s) at Wesleyan University, USC, and Northwestern University. I currently live in New York, with a partner who is a marketing manager for an educational nonprofit. I love movies, like to cook, and I can do a mean lindy swing out. I am INTP.
February 18, 2008
White people like…
Filed under: Culture — Peter @ 11:09 am
Not on markets, and a little outside my own expertise as an economic sociologist, and yet:
This blog has gotten a lot of attention lately, cataloging the things that White People Like. It is funny and pointed, in a really interesting way, and some of the reactions - ie the 1300 comments on Unfogged, are worth checking out.
I think Ogged catches my own sense of the thing, arguing that what makes it funny is not quite the self-mocking mirror that one can hold up to one’s own experience (or rather, my own experience), but the perfection of the trope against its unspoken counterpart - non-White people. Or as Ogged puts it, the screwed. So things like recycling, dogs, and Netflix are just so insignificant against the backdrop of dramatic, categorical, privilege. And I am not pushing an essentialist line here, I think that ‘White people’ stands in for privilege rather than a particular skin color. Not all White people are ‘White people’ in this fashion.
Anyhow, check it out for the funny, or check it out for the deep social commentary dressed up as fluff.
7 Responses to “White people like…”
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This site is hand-woven, and heavily borrows from the wonderful blueprint framwork. Rock on, grids!
Not quite
, but getting there..
February 18th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I was thinking about this blog last night and I guess my reaction is a little more ambivalent. I’m with Fontana Labs at Unfogged - the post titles alone are pretty funny, the catalogue of ’stuff’ pretty incisive (just seeing the heading ‘non-profit organizations’ gave me a laugh). But the effect is ruined somewhat because some of the comments are pretty heavy-handed (it’s already getting kind of monotonous), even though again many of the observations are clever and insightful. I agree that it could be read as a juxtaposing of the insignificant tastes and preferences (!) of privilege against the deep privations of the screwed, and I guess I’d be more willing to take it that way and laugh with it more heartily if I thought the screwed had an advocate in this blog, as opposed to the authors being intoxicated with their own sense of irony.
February 18th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I think part of the point is that the screwed get no advocate in any of these things. There’s another funny one that went around years back - Black People Love Us - which got similar reactions, though there the issue was that 1/2 the people didn’t get the joke, but the White people like site gives me a better feeling for significance of privilege v privations (well put).
IMHO, it works precisely because many of the things are totally aspirational prefs of middle-class US - the Apple, the dogs and coffees, etc. If the underlying issues were overtly part of the discussion, it wouldn’t work as a joke, or as criticism.
February 19th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Shit. I feel no desire to deconstruct the blog.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
What’s desire got to do with it? Must deconstruct the blog…
February 19th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
#80 White People Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone. Or is that Jewish people? Or Dominicans? Shitshitshit.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Must deconstruct the blog…
Yes. Must. And I’m Asian (though since I’m often called a banana, I guess I fall under #80, too.)
February 19th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I can’t leave well enough alone either, and I have scars all over my little monkey paws to prove it. (For example, they were perfect for tweezing out the Andrew Bird cd that got stuck down next to the seat in the VW. I mean–ahem–they were perfect for tweezing out that $2 winning instant lottery ticket that got stuck down next to the seat in the Tempo.)