Looking Forward to the 2008 ASA Annual Meeting in Boston The Sociology of Boston’s Restaurants: Where Diversity and Good Food Meet by Jack Levin, Northeastern University The viability of the restaurant scene Italian Food and Other Ethnicities requires expendable income. Clusters of Twenty years ago, Boston was domi- tend to think about almost everything expensive eating establishments indicate nated by Italian restaurants. Numerous I in terms of food, especially just prior prosperity; an accumulation of fast-food eateries specializing in to lunch or dinner when my appetite eateries likely reflect Northern or Southern expands to gargantuan proportions. My a lack of economic Italian cuisine remain. wife and I would probably eat dinner resources. Moreover, The North End report- out more often if there were more days the existence of a edly has almost 100. in the week. Far from alone, there are particular cuisine in a For an outstanding if many middle-class Bostonians for whom community signals the pricey meal, try the restaurants have replaced the dinner table presence of the ethnic Peruvian/Italian menu Volume 37 • Number 5 • May/June 2008 at home. group from whom at Taranta or the Daily Why should restaurants be of special that menu derives. As Catch on Hanover interest to sociologists? First, sociolo- the Latino population Street or Mamma gists have to eat just like everybody else. has grown in towns Maria’s at North Boston skyline Second, restaurants provide the possibil- and cities across the Square. For something ity of a social experience where diners country, for example, less pricey, but highly interact and enjoy the company of others. there have been dramatic increases in the recommended, head for Pizza Regina’s Of course, they also enjoy the Chicken number of Mexican restaurants in the or Mother Anna’s and follow that with Kiev, the Beef Wellington, the vegetable United States. dessert (a cannoli or two) at Mike’s Pastry lasagna, and the sweet potato fries (well, at Much of Boston’s social and economic (all on Hanover Street). Be sure to take the least I do). landscape can be gleaned from an exami- T, though, since parking is scarce in the As sociologists, we also gain an nation of the variety and history of the North End. overview of the ethnic and socioeco- eating establishments I know and, in many nomic circumstances in a community. cases, love. See Boston Restaurants, page 4 Alan Sica to Edit What Skills Do Contemporary Sociology Sociology Majors Learn and What Charles Lemert, Wesleyan University excellent choice to take over as editor Is the Pathway to ome among us are fabled for their of Contemporary Spersonal libraries. I know of one who is Sociology (CS)—the Using Them on said to have owned so many books that it journal that since was necessary to buttress the foundation of 1972 has recorded the Job? his home to prevent it from crashing under important trends Findings from Wave 2 of ASA’s the ever burgeoning weight. This person is and issues within widely admired for the work that springs North American baccalaureate survey to life from the groaning weight. sociology’s book by Roberta Spalter-Roth and inside Sica is similarly admired at once for his culture. In his Alan Sica Nicole Van Vooren, ASA Research and libraries and his works. Anyone who has application for its Development Department Enhancing Diversity in the visited him, as I have in both Pennsylvania editorship, Sica 3 Science Pipeline and Kansas, will not be in town long before wrote of the journal’s unique value to the SA has an ongoing research effort, Professional and scientific being shown his book collections. I could field. CS, he said, “has become essential to called “What Can I Do with a societies discuss their role in not begin to estimate their combined the task of broadening sociological literacy A Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology,” to help racial and ethnic diversification in weight (as he, in one of his many memo- in ways that the specialty journals can- assess how satisfied students who major science. rable book reviews, once did of an enor- not—which means that the editor must in sociology are with their degree, if they mous volume the importance of which fell exercise extraordinary care in managing are using skills they learned in college short of the vanishing point formed at the the journal’s content.” These are words ASA’s Policymaker in the sociology, and if they are in graduate vector arising from its actual and extreme uttered by one who treasures books, 4 Making school and/or in the labor force. In 2006, weight). It is not, however, the heft of Sica’s perhaps even privileges them, over shorter Elisabeth Jacobs is eager to the ASA Research and Development book holdings but the astonishing way forms of scholarly writing. But the words navigate Capitol Hill as the ASA Department initially examined the specific they are held. His books are lined neatly are not just words. Congressional Fellow. skills learned by a sample of 1,777 U.S. according to a numeric location system Sica is, in my opinion, American sociology majors who had earned bacca- of his own making. The shelves have the Sociology’s most astute historian. At laureate degrees in 2005 (see January 2006 George Mason Introduces appearance of being regularly dusted, each Pennsylvania State, he is the founder and Footnotes, p. 1). 5 book set and reset with loving care. On one keeper of the most important archive of a New Doctoral Program After collecting a second wave of data occasion I was accompanied on a tour of the private letters and papers of authors GMU seeks to develop public in 2007 for 778 respondents, we examined Sica’s office library by two others who were whose work in sociology ought to be avail- sociologists with its new program. the relationship between the skills students at Pennsylvania State University, as I was, able to future generations. He is an accom- reported learning as part of the major and to address a conference. Without miss- plished scholar whose writings are many in The Tragedy at Northern those used on the job. A key finding in this ing a beat, Alan took each of us to those kind and daunting in quality. But, these he research is that sociology graduates who 6 Illinois University of our books he owned. Up and down the is, because first and foremost he is a reader. communicated to employers the skills they Sociologists write about the rows he would come to then take in hand Alan and his wife Anne, after their chil- learned as undergraduates enhance the aftermath of and reactions to the one of our books. Ever so gently he would dren, care for few things in life more than likelihood that they will actually use these tragedy on their campus. turn to a favorite passage. As if address- reading—and by reading they together skills on the job and will have greater job ing no one in particular he would reveal mean fiction and poetry, biography and satisfaction than those who do not com- what he liked or loved about the text. Then history, as well as academic nonfiction. Science Policy ..............................................2 municate that they have these skills. without seeking or expecting a response, It is a game not to be won when, in the Among the respondents to the 2007 From the Executive Officer ......................2 he returned the treasure to its proper place. expectation of enlightening (even trump- survey, 60 percent of the graduates were The ritual was a perfectly subtle expression ing) him, one mentions to Sica a poem by Sociologists in Research employed in December 2006 and not of regard—less for the authors than for Borges or a shorter piece by Henry James attending graduate school (either full or part and Applied Settings .........................7 what they had wrought as it had entered so or even some obscure early text in French time), and 22 percent were working and firmly into his thinking. by Gilles Deleuze. He will have been there ASA Forum .................................................10 attending graduate school. Those attending Sica is a book person. He writes them. first and remembered better. graduate school full-time and not working Announcements ......................................11 He reviews them. He reads them. But, Contemporary Sociology will be in good Obituaries ...................................................14 above all else, he keeps them close to and caring hands when Alan Sica joins the head and heart. This is why he is such an now long list of its distinguished editors. See Sociology Majors, page 8 2 footnotes • May/June 2008 from the executive officer This standard for determining who Who Speaks for Social Science—In Court? is a scientific expert has allowed vari- ous interpretations by judges across the hen a court of law admits “expert” excluding the evidence from five of the under Iowa or federal law. The court relied country, and it has not prevented some Wtestimony on evidence from science, defendant’s purported expert upon other expert evidence extreme judicial interpretation because what standards apply to determine who witnesses because they were from the fields of child there is always leeway in interpreting the qualifies as a witness? From ASA’s perspec- unqualified to opine on development, psychology, notion of relevant expertise. Therefore, tive as a social scientific organization, this social science topics relevant sociology, psychiatry, and challenges such as those raised by this case issue is central to the Iowa Supreme Court to the substance of this case. the “quality or methodology will continue and require response from case, Katherine Varnum et al.