Brief intellectual biography
Mario Luis Small is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.
Small’s research has focused on urban poverty, inequality and culture, and migration
from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. His work has been published in
journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Social
Forces, Theory and Society, and Social Science Quarterly. His recent book, Villa
Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio (2004, University of
Chicago Press), examines social capital in a Boston housing complex inhabited primarily
by Puerto Rican immigrants and questions the idea that neighborhood poverty has the
same consequences for people regardless of city context. The book received the C.
Wright Mills Award for Best Book from the Society for the Study of Social Problems and
the Robert E. Park Award for Best Book from the Community and Urban Sociology
Section of the American Sociological Association, among other citations. Small is
currently working on the distribution of for-profit and non-profit establishments across
neighborhoods, and on the mechanisms by which childcare centers and other
neighborhood organizations shape the social networks and research-accessing strategies
of the poor.
Working title and provisional abstract
“The Science in Ethnographic Research?”
In recent years, a number of ethnographic researchers in sociology have attempted to
address the limitations of qualitative research by appropriating methods and insights from
classical statistics, such as worrying about “bias” and “selection on the dependent
variable.” This effort has been consistent with King et al.’s (1994) Designing Social
Inquiry, and is often positively received by funders and social scientists concerned with
the scientific status of ethnographic research. In this paper I draw on published
sociological ethnographic research and on my work in housing projects in Boston and
among mothers in childcare centers in New York to assess these efforts. I suggest that
these efforts, recommended by both quantitative and qualitative researchers, are largely
ineffective and likely to undermine the strengths of ethnographic work.
Some publications
Forthcoming. Small, Mario L. “Lost in Translation: How Not to Make Qualitative
Research More Scientific.” In Michèle Lamont (editor), Report from Workshop on
Interdisciplinary Standards for Systematic Qualitative Research. Washington, DC: National
Science Foundation.
2004. Small, Mario L. Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston
Barrio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2006. Small, Mario L. “Neighborhood Institutions as Resource Brokers: Childcare
Centers, Inter-Organizational Ties, and Resource Access among the Poor.” Social
Problems. 53(2):274-92.
2002. Small, Mario L. “Culture, Cohorts, and Social Organization Theory:
Understanding Local Participation in a Latino Housing Project.” American Journal of
Sociology. 108(1):1-54.
2001. Small, Mario L. and Katherine Newman. “Urban Poverty After The Truly
Disadvantaged: The Rediscovery of the Family, the Neighborhood, and Culture.”
Annual Review of Sociology. 27:23-45.