Founded in 1925, The New Yorker is a weekly American magazine known for publishing serious essays, cultural commentaries, and social criticism while still feeling like a “fifteen-cent comic paper,” as inaugural editor, Harold Ross, famously put it. Could Contexts accomplish something similar? Amin Ghaziani sat down with James M. Jasper and Jeff Goodwin, who edited Contexts from 2005 to 2007—the first pair of editors to helm the magazine since its founding in 2002. From publishing cartoons to creating mugs and t-shirts, Jasper and Goodwin make it clear that trying to define the animating goal of the magazine has proven elusive though exciting from its earliest days.
James M. Jasper
Jeff Goodwin
AMIN GHAZIANI (AG): As Contexts magazine approaches its 25th volume and its move to online-only publication, I’ve been sitting down for conversations with all the previous editorial teams. My first question is really about intention: What did the two of you see as your mission when you took the reins?
JAMES M. JASPER (JJ): Claude Fischer, the first editor, had done a herculean job of establishing a readable magazine. We proposed, then tried, to make it more entertaining. We continued to edit the hell out of all content, going through five or six drafts of almost everything. Then, we took The New Yorker as a kind of model, adding little tidbits at the end of many articles, trying to come up with funny photos and captions, running occasional New Yorker cartoons, and of course adding the “Fool” column at the end of each issue. Not everyone thought that humor had a place in sociology. Someone even complained that reading Contexts was like reading The New Yorker—which we took as a big compliment, even though it was not meant that way!
AG: I love the idea of elevating Contexts to the level of The New Yorker! To me, that suggests a diversity of content, a serious engagement with social life, and an accessible entry point into big ideas, all, as you said Jim, embracing humor, satire, and wit. The New Yorker is unique in the world of magazine publishing, and so striving to be like it makes sense, given the unique role of Contexts in the ecology of ASA journals. What do you think, Jeff?
JEFF GOODWIN (JG): I think we worried that a magazine aiming to bring sociological research to general readers could be, however well written, a little dry and boring. So, we tried to spice it up in various ways, including Jim’s humor column. We tried to publish some provocative pieces, among other strategies. I remember how a well-known sociologist complained to me about a pretty radical article we published by Michael Schwartz that was critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He was irate, and worried that his state legislature would go after the sociology department in his public university. But that was a pretty rare piece. Most sociologists are liberals who reach liberal conclusions, so Contexts necessarily replicates the liberalism of the profession. This limits how provocative the magazine can be. Then again, liberalism can be pretty provocative in a red state.
JJ: We tried hard to find conservative sociologists to spark controversies but largely failed.
AG: The effort to include conservative voices is important. It’s precisely why we interviewed Charles Fain Lehman from the Manhattan Institute last spring. Something he said was clarifying for me: “Look, about half the country is conservative. You can think that they are wrong, but if you want to have an impact on those people, it is helpful to at least have some vague idea of what they think. You can, of course, think that they’re motivated by terrible things, but even a drop of epistemic humility should cause you to go, ‘Maybe they just have different value prioritizations.’” That phrase, “a drop of epistemic humility,” I thought was quite profound, and it holds the key to moving beyond the limits of the magazine’s potential. That potential, by the way, spans so many types of contributions. From searing images to joyful artwork, stark truths to utopian visions, Contexts embodies an intellectual, visual, and narrative diversity that we seldom see in more traditional academic journals. Why is it important to have a space like this?
JJ: For us, the goal with Contexts was always to reach beyond professional sociologists. Economics and psychology are in sync with American culture in ways that sociology may not be—all the more reason to get our views out there. Americans do not want to hear about inequality and social structure, but they need to.
JG: It’s true that sociologists take up a very wide range of topics and employ a range of perspectives in their work. If nothing else, Contexts can help sociologists and other social scientists catch a glimpse of what other sociologists, beyond their own areas of interest, are doing. It’s extremely difficult, needless to say, to stay on top of all the research that’s being done in all the subfields of sociology, even in those subfields one knows best.
JJ: That’s right. Our real audience was sociologists reading as non-specialists.
AG: That’s an important audience, although gosh, it’s difficult to define and then try to reach it. But that’s the mission of the magazine, after all: to champion “public sociology” and to showcase the public significance of our discipline. How did your term as editors shape the way you think about that idea?
JJ: Our original hope to expand newsstand sales faded quickly. We toyed with the idea of reaching policymakers; I even had a disappointing conversation with Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts about this. Finally, we realized that students were a large potential audience, hence the idea of a Contexts Reader as well as a feature we called “keywords.” At the time, we also hoped to make enough revenue for the magazine to break even. We got the ASA to start selling Contexts mugs and t-shirts, but I think Jeff and I bought most of them to give to our student editors.
AG: I remember seeing those!
JG: Yes, I’m afraid the idea of bringing sociology to the masses faded rather quickly for us. I think we hoped there might be a breakthrough at some point, that the magazine might hit a tipping point sometime in the future and become a well-known publication among the reading public. But that never happened. But we did learn that university students, who number in the millions in the United States—over 15 million, in fact—could be a key audience for the magazine.
"Americans do not want to hear about inequality and social structure, but they need to."
JAMES M. JASPER
AG: Some of the most common ways of thinking about “the public” include the press, like magazines and newspapers, as well as blogs, podcasts, and op-eds. Our students are also an important public, even if we don’t often think about them in this way. Can you say more about the relationship between Contexts and the university?
JG: We only have anecdotal evidence for it, but I think a lot of faculty assign Contexts articles to their students since they are clear and concise. Few undergraduates can digest American Sociological Review articles, so translating them and other journal articles into plain English is a real service and something that some sociologists have a gift for.
JJ: Like Jeff said, we came to think of classrooms as a major audience. We couldn’t talk the ASA into starting a website, another obvious outlet, but our successors Doug and Chris did a terrific job of this.
AG: How do you think Contexts has fared in its attempts to reach audiences beyond the academy?
JJ: It has struggled. Take newsstand sales. They were never huge, but we hoped to expand them. Well, it turned out that an ASA bylaw said that an ASA publication could not be sold to a non-member for less than the price to a member.
AG: I didn’t know about that bylaw.
JJ: Yes, so Contexts was out there with a $12 price tag. The ASA bureaucracy moves slowly and reluctantly, and we were still fighting for widening distribution when we stepped down. Supplying materials for classroom use worked pretty well, although I don’t know if that is still the case.
JG: Other than students, Contexts has plainly failed to reach an audience beyond sociologists. In retrospect, the animating goal of the magazine—to bring sociological research to general readers-was hubristic.
AG: Why is that?
JG: Sociologists and our work—it just isn’t as interesting to others as we think it is. Perhaps a focus group or survey suggested that the reading public was hungry for sociological research but buying and reading a magazine that focuses on such research is something else altogether. And a generational shift occurred not long after Contexts was launched: today, people under 40 no longer read much of anything longer than 280 characters. They’re getting their news and opinions from social media, including podcasts and YouTube and the like. I think a good weekly or monthly podcast by Contexts’ editors might possibly reach many, many more non-academics than the magazine ever has. And students might absorb more from a podcast than from even a well written article. But doing a podcast right takes a lot of work and is not a skill we teach in graduate school.
AG: Incorporating a podcast is a great idea. I hope this is something that future editors try to do, especially as Contexts goes online-only. Speaking of which, do you have any words of wisdom for the American Sociological Association and for the next editors of the magazine as they undertake this grand transition for our one and only public-facing magazine?
JJ: No one reads books or hard copies of journals anymore, so this transition makes sense at some level. If only we had nourished those newsstand sales.
JG: I’m not sure an online magazine goes far enough in terms of reaching a broad audience. If general readers didn’t read or even find the print magazine, will they find and read an online version of it? I think a podcast under Contexts’ auspices is much more likely to find a nonaca-demic audience than an online magazine. I could be wrong, of course, but I think this is the better vehicle for public sociology, especially for younger people.
JJ: Oy. Those mysterious young people! They act like the future is theirs. [laughs]
Amin Ghaziani is in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. The co-editor of Contexts, he is the author, most recently, of Long Live Queer Nightlife.
