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.