Spring 2001
Getting it right: the 'big-picture' sociology of Robin Stryker
Photo by Jamason Chen
ROBIN STRYKER
Education
Ph.D. 1986, U of Wisconsin-Madison
Professional background
2000 professor of sociology, affiliate in Law School, U of M
1986-2000 U of Iowa
Selected honors & awards
Collegiate Teaching Award and Recognition for Exceptional Teaching, U of Iowa
Pres., Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics
Chair, Sociology of Law Section, American Sociological Association (ASA)
Barrington Moore Prize: Best article in comparative and historical sociology
Work in progress
"Law, Politics, and Social Inequality"
Interesting fact
Stryker's father, Sheldon Stryker (B.A. '48, Ph.D. '55), is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Indiana. His bio on the U of Indiana web site quips, "As he discovered at recent ASA meetings, his name is now 'Robin's father, formerly known as Sheldon Stryker.'"
Robin Stryker says it all "started in the womb." Quite literally an insider, she overheard sociology lectures attended by her student mother-to-be at Indiana University, where her father was an esteemed social psychologist. A self-described "academic brat," she spent her childhood steeped in social theory. As a teenager, she even helped edit her father's scholarly papers.
Today, that precocious social scientist is carrying on the family tradition as a new professor in the U's Department of Sociology, where her colleagues include her husband, Scott Eliason, a specialist in labor market research and statistics. One of the nation's leading authorities on law, politics, and social and economic inequality--with a list of publications and awards that runs to 16 pages--she has made her mark as a scholar doing what she calls "systematic, detailed theoretical and empirical work" on economic and social stratification, wealth distribution, and labor market processes.
Describing her scholarly approach as "judicious, balanced, and careful," Stryker is fiercely committed to "good science," to "mulling things over and getting it right"--but always, she notes, with one eye on the big picture. It's that big-picture view that gives shape and life to the raw data and connects her work to the world of public policy.
Stryker's work is grounded in the lives of real people, studied both up close and through a wide-angle lens. A consummate scholar who relishes rummaging in "dusty old archives," she is equally at home teaching a class of 40 undergraduates, mentoring graduate students, conducting workplace surveys, or interviewing unemployed ex-offenders on the streets of New York.
Through personal interviews and observation, she says, she gathers information about people "from the inside." Then comes the rigorous analysis, the "good science." Ultimately, her research sheds new light on such politically volatile big-picture, real-life issues as wage gaps, affirmative action, and comparable worth.
Income disparities and unequal wealth distribution are not political fictions but economic realities supported by hard data, Stryker notes, underscoring the "moral importance" as well as the policy implications of sociological research. "Given what we know--trends in poverty, wealth distribution, and income inequality, for example--there are some things we should do based on good information," she says. "Research does not take place in a moral vacuum."
Yet Stryker declines opportunities for punditry, insisting that her job is to inform debate and help shape public policy, not to proselytize. "Sociological processes are too complex to be reduced to sound bites and platitudes," she reasons. "I'm not nearly as certain about things as most media spokespeople are. I am, first and always, a scientist, both by training and temperament. I'm not the kind of outspoken academic who will be making lots of people angry."
The same evenhandedness informs Stryker's teaching. She says her teaching philosophy hearkens back to her upbringing in a "Midwestern democratic milieu" and her experiences as a field researcher, which have helped her to be a "better teacher for all kinds of students. When I teach," she says, "I learn on my feet, from my students, just as I do when I conduct interviews."
Like her research, Stryker's teaching is far from an academic exercise. "My job is to help students figure out what they think, and to give them a road map with parameters for exploring and understanding human societies," she says.
"I can't imagine anything more fundamental than producing knowledge and understanding about who gets what and why. Who gets accorded human dignity? Who has power and status, and why?
"These are some of the central questions of my research and my teaching. And they are questions that simply must be asked at a public university."