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FALL 2014/WINTER 2015 dialogo The biannual publication of the University of Chicago Division of the Social Sciences A GRAD STUDENT PUTS THE CHICAGO SCHOOL NUMBERS OF SOCIOLOGY ON DATA OVERDRIVE. AND dialogo is produced for alumni WHAT DREW YOU BACK TO SOCIOLOGY— and friends of the Division MATHEMATICAL SOCIOLOGY IN PARTICULAR? of the Social Sciences. NEIGHBOR- Around 2007 I started to think about the predictive models companies were using—recommendations from Amazon, your credit card company Additional divisional and asking about ”strange” purchases. In all these online applications, alumni news appears at HOODS computer scientists and machine learning folks have really shown that REPORT FROM THE DEAN mag.uchicago.edu/dialogo. large parts of social action are predictable. It’s pretty amazing. But these CHANGING engineers are mainly interested in making predictions. They are typically For inquiries about Dialogo, not very interested in what produces the predictability. That’s what please contact Nina B. Herbst LANDSCAPE Strictly speaking, Forest Gregg, AB’04, AM’12 (Sociology), social scientists are supposed to do—understand the causes of predictable didn’t run away and join the circus. After earning his bachelor’s social action. And since very few social scientists were engaging with at [email protected] in sociology, he hit the road as part of a small troupe he’d these big applied social science projects, it seemed to me there was a or 773.834.9067. formed with friends: Runaway Circus. They crossed the country real opportunity opening up. Find us on Facebook: in a vegetable oil–fueled bus performing for audiences of five very day as I walk to my office as The Becker Friedman Institute and the UChicago Social Sciences people to 400, in bars, churches, parks, and at least one WERE YOU ALWAYS A MATH AND COMPUTER GUY? E dean of the Division, I can’t help Collegium are both powerful examples of “radical intentional community.” No, but one of the really great things about UChicago’s Department of Follow us: @UChicagoSSD noticing that the map of the Social Sciences ways in which faculty and students are When the bus broke down, the circus broke up, so Gregg Sociology is you have a lot of freedom to take courses across the University. at UChicago is being redrawn. In part, I constantly moving across disciplines and followed his biofuels interest, working as a research and So because I’d taken a lot of social science classes as an undergrad, when mean literally. This academic year saw spaces in pursuit of their questions. The systems designer at Frybrid in Seattle, ultimately penning I came back for grad school I was able to study computer design, statistics, FEATURES a dramatic expansion of the Division’s BFI unites Chicago Booth, the Law School, the 2008 handbook SVO: Powering Your Vehicle with Straight linear algebra, even machine learning at the Toyota Institute. 2 HUMAN (AND NONHUMAN) RIGHTS space. The opening of Saieh Hall for and the Social Sciences, bringing economic Vegetable Oil (New Society Publishers). Since returning to WHAT’S YOUR MAIN INTEREST? Economics in October represented the methods to bear on any number of new the University in 2010 to pursue a doctorate in sociology, Comparative Human Development’s I’m interested in understanding how different kinds of land uses follow single most significant addition, in terms problems. And just up the block at the he has helped organize the Computational Social Science new chair sees the field expanding and affect one another across the city. That’s one of the most traditional of square footage, to the Division since Neubauer Collegium, anthropologists Workshop and the methods course Computing for Social in new directions. things you can study in sociology, and of course UChicago is an the Social Sciences Research Building work with public health experts on health Science. Gregg is also an owner of DataMade, a civic technology important originator of urban sociology, especially when it comes to 4 INTERNATIONAL ENTERPRISE opened in the 1920s. Saieh Hall is home care in India, professors of cinema and company focused on open data and open-source software to how one neighborhood group succeeds another and the competitive UChicago honors its Latin to the Department of Economics and the statisticians analyze the history of montage, “make people more powerful.” and synergistic relationship of housing and commercial zones. There American research roots. Becker Friedman Institute for Research and economists, archaeologists, historians, in Economics within the stunningly and classicists are creating a new discipline are now opportunities to model some of these interrelationships. With 8 JOINING FORCES restored and expanded walls of the former of comparative economics. computational tools, we can ask: when is a coffee shop helped if there’s The Center for the Study of Race, Chicago Theological Seminary. In spring Which is all to say: these are exciting a little boutique nearby? We’ve made it more predictable to say: if you Politics, and Culture nurtures 2015—in yet another former seminary—the times in the Social Sciences. I urge you to open a Starbucks, what other kinds of businesses might open up next. cross-disciplinary research Division and the University will celebrate visit and experience with me the changing HOW DOES YOUR WORK AT DATAMADE OVERLAP and programming. the opening of 5701 South Woodlawn as shape of our Division, this campus, and WITH YOUR ACADEMIC RESEARCH? the base of the Neubauer Collegium for our ideas. DataMade has been a great vehicle for me to get to know and talk to the ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Culture and Society. City of Chicago and the nonprofits interested in the work I’m doing 10 ALUMNI AND DIVISIONAL NEWS The andscapel that these buildings on neighborhood formation and economic development policies. It has – Faculty books, accolades, and events transform is intellectual as well as spatial. SINCERELY, also provided good leads on the kinds of data that are available out there. – In memoriam Saieh Hall and 5701 South Woodlawn HOW DO YOU SEE QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE – Spotlight are both overflowing with resources for SOCIOLOGY WORKING TOGETHER? collaborative research: specially designed Sociologists—and people in general, if they spend time thinking about it spaces in which groups of scholars can work —understand what part of a city is their neighborhood, and they have COVER together over long periods of time, DAVID NIRENBERG good reasons for thinking that. Quants should be so lucky. People who media technology for global collaborations, This 1951 language primer, published by the Mexican do quantitative work don’t have that informed, rich understanding of Secretary of Public Education and included in and chapels and libraries reconfigured to DEBORAH R. AND EDGAR D. JANNOTTA space; they use census blocks and other convenient administrative anthropologist Paul Friedrich’s papers, is fronted by a intensify the intellectual ferment that has PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL THOUGHT, MEDIEVAL HISTORY, MIDDLE EAST STUDIES, boundaries. I’d like to see us find an approach that can draw upon people’s woodcut done in a style imitative of Diego Rivera that always nourished the Social Sciences at the highlights and celebrates folk culture in Mexico. AND THE COLLEGE thoughtfulness and experience of a place to define meaningful social University of Chicago. DEAN, DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM TIAN, AB’10 borders. The paper I’m working on now describes a methodology that CREDITS trusts people’s qualitative understanding of what makes a neighborhood FOREST GREGG IDENTIFIES THE FOUR MAJOR EDITOR: and reproduces, through more objective measures, a way of breaking up Claire Zulkey INTENTIONS OF CIVIC APPS (LIKE THE TYPE CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Nina B. Herbst DATAMADE HOSTS): TO INFORM, TO PERSUADE, the city into areas that are experientially meaningful to the people who DESIGN DIRECTOR: Guido Mendez TO PROVIDE ACCESS, OR TO CHANGE THE WAY live in them. DESIGN: Adam Jankowski DEMOCRACY WORKS. PROOFREADER: Rhonda L. Smith PHOTOGRAPHY BY DREW REYNOLDS —SEAN CARR, AB’90 FALL 2014/WINTER 2015 dialogo 1 HUMAN (AND NON- HUMAN) RIGHTS COMPARATIVE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT’S NEW CHAIR SEES THE FIELD EXPANDING IN NEW DIRECTIONS. In this isolated village of about 200 caregivers in group homes respond to the sexual says Kulick, researchers can reevaluate people, Don Kulick lives in a palm tree lives of significantly mentally and physically questions like “What is a human?” “How do we bark house built for him by Gapun disabled adults. Sweden and Denmark, both “What does it mean to be human?” villagers and eats food they prepare considered progressive, “diverge when it comes Comparative Human Development engage in while he completes a dictionary and to sexuality and disability,” says Kulick. In prioritizes interdisciplinary work: grammar of Tayap, their undocumented Sweden, professionals actively prevent disabled academics from many disciplines merge language that has only about 45 adults from having sexual experiences. Social to study fields including anthropology, a respectful speakers. To thank the villagers for their workers and staff in Danish group homes, in behavioral biology, and cultural and hospitality, Kulick brings them gifts such contrast, “help to facilitate the sexual lives of developmental psychology, highlighting way with as butcher knives, which have multiple people with disabilities,” Kulick says, “not by race, gender, class, and sexuality. Yet by functions in the rain forest—including having sex with them but by helping them and large, Kulick believes, scholars in beings who being the favorite playthings of curious understand and explore their sexuality in other the humanities and social sciences “still toddlers. “Kids love them,” Kulick says, ways.” Living in the homes, he observed that haven’t covered species as a theoretical “and parents give them anything they many Danish helpers have an attitude of, “Let’s and empirical area of investigation.” It’s are never want.