COOLEY AWARD PRESENTATION COMMENTS
First, I want to thank the members of this year’s Cooley Award Committee.
Although David Karp served as chairperson of the committee, he cannot be here
tonight. For that reason, I have the welcome opportunity to present the award this
evening. I want to thank David for coordinating our efforts. I also want to express
my appreciation to Adele Clarke who served as the third member of the committee.
We were, I feel, a good team. It was fun to serve together.
Being on the Cooley Committee is both a pleasure and a challenge. The pleasure
comes from the opportunity to read a number of really fine books reflecting the
power and insight provided by an interactionist approach to diverse areas of human
behavior. It is particularly pleasurable to read these books as the academic
semester ends and we have the relative freedom to give the nominations our full
attention. Reading some great books is a wonderfully pleasant way to preview the
summer break. At the same time, it can sometimes be difficult to choose a single
book for recognition. Despite our agreement that several of the books we read
illuminate important issues and display rich conceptual imaginations, it was
apparent after our initial rankings that one book had clearly emerged as a
consensual favorite.
As you would imagine, each member of the committee ranked the books and offered
their independent evaluations. To give you a taste of our admiration for the winning
book, here are some representative comments we shared about the work. “This is a
book that makes artful use of multiple methods.” “This book takes me into an
unfamiliar subculture and by that standard does what good ethnography should.”
“The amount of material collected by the author is really prodigious.” “I liked how
the author framed both personal and collective identity issues, and especially how
[the author] extended the ethnography trans-nationally.” “Analytically, this book
has ‘legs’.” “This book’s findings offer insights that can be applied to studies of all
sorts of cultural change.” “This is a terrific book. It is also a product of extensive,
careful fieldwork.”
As you can see, I am trying to build a bit of suspense about this year’s winner. The
author deserves more than one round of applause. So, in just a moment I want to
tell you the title of the winning book and its author. I hope you will express your
appreciation after the author’s name is announced. However, I then want to say just
a few more concrete things about the book’s achievements before actually
presenting the award.
So, let me tell you right now that the book that garnered our mutual praise and
approbation is entitled Rave Culture: The Alteration and Decline of a Philadelphia
Music Scene, written by Tammy L. Anderson.
Professor Anderson’s book details the rise and decline of the electronic music scene
that thrived especially during the decade of the nineties. Using a combination of
auto-ethnography, penetrating participant observation, and strategic interviews,
she explains the factors responsible for the decline of this “cultural scene” and the
different efforts made to resurrect it. Her analysis reveals the range of stakeholders
in this particular subculture and how each group reflects the different individual
and collective identities produced by the rave culture phenomenon (and by
extension, any subculture). Moreover, Professor Anderson shows how various
social factors, beyond the commercialization of the rave culture scene, contributed
to its erosion. The generalizations offered, based on “thick description” and
multiple interviews, are strengthened by corresponding analyses of the electronic
music scene in London and Ibiza, Spain.
While those who read Professor Anderson’s book will enjoy learning about a
particular cultural scene during a particular historical moment, her effort has much
wider significance. It reveals the potential power of an interactionist approach to
move well beyond a micro-sociological focus. We certainly learn how persons
behave at electronic dance music events and how both the music and events shape
their identities. Equally, Professor Anderson illuminates the social organization of
this scene and the bases for cultural change. This book teaches us how cultural
scenes expand, evolve, wither, and take on different forms. One committee member
summed up the contribution of the book this way: “While she never forgets that she
is writing in the interactionist tradition, and remains focused on the ways people
assign meaning to their activities, Anderson’s ambitious attempt to confront issues
of scale, time, and geography make Rave Culture a model for how interactionist
analysis can address sociology’s largest questions.”
This brief overview only hints at the richness of Professor Anderson’s
accomplishment. As I invite Professor Anderson to the podium to receive the Cooley
award, please express yet again your appreciation for her exceedingly valuable
contribution to our collective enterprise.