Geezer talk: An emeritus professor looks back

Abstract

What has this sociologist been doing in the years since his accession to the not quite exalted Emeritus state? Not much sociology, that's for sure. Retired or not, sociologists who don't see each other often have the habit of asking "what you're doing these days," by which they mean "what are you working on." Not to be working on something is an admission of idleness, stagnation, or worse. When I'm asked I usually reply, "Not much, some gardening, some carpentry, cooking, home maintenance; I don't use a cleaning woman, not even a cleaning person; I spent most of a day recently polishing my oak floors. I'm really retired." I had a deviant career (to put the best light on it), making it mostly on my criti cism and my writing skills rather than one timeless project after another. But I was well and quickly rewarded; I belonged to a demographically lucky cohort of Ph.D.'s. No assistant professor anxieties. In my first post-Ph.D. job I was promoted to ten ure by the University of Illinois after three years without even knowing I was being considered for it. No accumulation of files, no gathering of letters of recommenda tion, no ad hoc committees. The head of the department simply informed me one day that I was being promoted. Maybe one of the last gasps of the old boy network. One of the early high points (and an introduction to the ambiguities of university life) was when, as a young academic, I was solicited by The New York Times for articles in its Sunday Book Review and its Magazine. This was met by some of my then senior colleagues with a peculiar combination of envy and disdain?disdain because the Times was a "popular" (i.e., not scholarly) medium, envy because (something I didn't know then) the Times was harder to get into than even the most prestigious of the professional journals. But the highest points were my three years doing the field research for my commune book, followed by the three years run ning the journal Contemporary Sociology?those events being the closest I ever came to creating a community around me, although, as an "alienated" type, I never had much gift for community. I liked teaching too-never burned out on it?espe cially graduate students, though for some of them I was an acquired taste. Still I was most pleased to mentor a bunch of first class Ph.D.'s (inevitably, some medio cre ones as well) to teach theory to first year graduate students and, in a small