Jack Katz's 

Current and Recently Requested Papers

 

"Toward a Natural History of Ethnical Censorship", Draft. (PDF, 98K)

"Ethical Escape Routes for Underground Ethnographers", Draft - March 2006. (PDF, 297K)

"On the Rhetoric and Politics of Ethnographic Methodology", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 595: 280-308. 2004. (PDF, 1.8MB)

In a variety of ways, all ethnographies are politically cast and policy relevant. Each of the three recurrent political rhetorics is related to a unique set of fieldwork practices. By shaping the ethnographer's relations to subjects and readers, each methodology also structures a distinctive class identity for the researchers--as worker, as aristocrat, or as bourgeois professional.

"The Criminologists' Gang", In C. Sumner, ed., Blackwell Companion to Criminology. London: Blackwell. (With Curtis Jackson-Jacobs). Pp.91-124. 2004. (PDF, 2.1 MB)

"Metropolitan Crime Myths" in D. Halle, ed., New York and Los Angeles: Politics, Society and Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  Pp. 195-224. 2003. (PDF, 1.8 MB)

"Phenomenological ethnography in sociology and anthropology". (with T Csordas)  Ethnography, 4 (1): 275-288. 2003.  (PDF, 66 KB)

"Start Here: Social Ontology and Research Strategy" Theoretical Criminology, 6 (3): 255-278. 2002. (PDF, 110 KB)

Abstract:  Theory is about starting points. Research usually relies on theory to justify starting with pre-commitments to independent variables, background factors, or structural conditions that will explain historically and geographically varying phenomena, which are treated as dependent, fungible, superficial upshots, or otherwise secondary and essentially inferior. I propose that we start by trying to describe the phenomena to be explained as they exist for the people living them. For this, we need theory of another sort, a theory of social ontology that indicates the lines of inquiry required to produce a complete description. If we start research by describing the nature of social phenomena as they are experienced, it will make a difference in structuring data gathering; in developing a research craft capable of seeing practice, interaction manouvres, and tacit embodiment; in shaping a research agenda; and, ultimately, in where we end substantively.

"From How to Why: On Luminous Description and Causal Inference in Ethnography; Part 2".  Ethnography, 3 (1): 63-90. 2002.  (PDF, 85 KB)

Abstract: Ethnographers often start fieldwork by focusing on descriptive tasks that will enable them to answer questions about how social life proceeds, and then they work toward explaining more formally why patterns appear in their data. Making the transition from 'how?' to 'why?' can be a dilemma, but the ethnographer's folk culture provides especially useful clues. By dwelling on their appreciation of especially luminous data, ethnographers can light the path to causal inference. In this, the second of a two-part article, four of seven forms for characterizing the rhetorical effectiveness of ethnographic data are illustrated and the distinctive resources they offer for causal explanation are analyzed.

"From How to Why: On Luminous Description and Causal Inference in Ethnography; Part 1".  Ethnography, 2 (4): 443-473. 2001. (PDF, 112 KB)

"Analytic Induction," in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Smelser and Baltes, eds., 2001. (PDF, 26 KB)

Introduction: Analytic induction (AI) is a research logic used to collect data, develop analysis, and organize the presentation of research findings. Its formal objective is causal explanation, a specification of the individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the emergence of some part of social life. AI calls for the progressive redefinition of the phenomenon to be explained (the explanandum) and of explanatory factors (the explanans), such that a perfect (sometimes called "universal") relationship is maintained. Initial cases are inspected to locate common factors and provisional explanations. As new cases are examined and initial hypotheses are contradicted, the explanation is reworked in one or both of two ways... 

"Hunting for Bias:  Notes on the Evolution of Strategies for Documenting Invidious Discrimination", Social Science, Social Policy and Law. In Austin Sarat, Robert Kagan and Patricia Ewing, eds., New York: Russell Sage. pp.210-257. 1999. (PDF, 2.3 MB)

"Ethnography's Warrants", 1997 (PDF, 2.4 MB)

"The social psychology of Adam and Eve", 1996 (PDF, 1.8 MB)

"Jazz in Social Interactions: Personal Creativity, Collective Constraint, and Motivational Explanation in the Social Thought of Howard S. Becker", 1994 (PDF, 1.6 MB)

"What makes crime 'news'?", 1987 (PDF, 1.5 MB)

"A Theory of Qualitative Methodology: The Social System of Analytic Fieldwork."; In Contemporary Field Research. Robert Emerson, ed. (Boston: Little-Brown). pp. 127-148. 1983. (PDF, 1.4 MB)

"Social Movement Against White-Collar Crime". In Vol.II, Criminology Review Yearbook. Egon Bittner and Sheldon Messinger, eds. (Beverly Hills: Sage). pp. 161-184, 1980 (PDF, 1.7 MB)

"Legality and Equality: Plea Bargaining in the Prosecution of White-Collar and Common Crimes." Law & Society Review, 13 (Winter): 431-59, 1979 (PDF, 1.7 MB)

"CONCERTED IGNORANCE: The Social Construction of Cover-up." URBAN LIFE, Vol. 8, No. 3 October 1979. 295-316 (PDF, .8 MB)

"Cover-up and Collective Integrity: On the Natural Antagonisms of Authority Internal and External to Organizations ." Social Problems, Vol. 25, No. 1 October 1977 (PDF, 1.4 MB)

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