Jeffries Vincent (Editor). Handbook Of Public Sociology
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262 Chapter 14
Tong, Gengxing. 2005. “Family Factory Workers in Bei Township.” Pp. 279–335 in
Collection of Master Dissertations of Peking, Tsinghua, and Renmin Univeristies, edited
by Yefu Zheng. Shandong: Shandong People’s Press.
Touraine, Alain. 1981. The Voice and the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1988. Return of the Actor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
263
In the summer of 1986 an economist named Joseph Kalt at Harvard’s
John F. Kennedy School of Government called me on the phone. We’d
never met, but he said he had been looking at some economic data from
American Indian reservations, and he found some of it puzzling. He asked
some of his students if they knew of anyone on the Harvard faculty who
studied contemporary Native American issues. One of them came up with
my name. Kalt wanted to know if I’d like to have lunch and talk about his
data. I said sure. I was finishing a book on contemporary American Indian
political activism and had been pondering what to do next. The phone call
caught my interest. Especially in those days, sociologists didn’t get many
calls from economists looking for advice.
Over lunch, Kalt explained that his own research involved, among other
things, natural resource economics. Recently he had been looking at data
on timber and wildlife management on Indian reservations, and he had
come across two related American Indian nations located in the same
ecosystem and sharing broadly similar economic assets and opportunities.
However, their tribally owned timber operations were performing very
differently. One nation was running a profitable timber company and ef-
fectively managing its forest for multiple goals including sustained timber
yield, water conservation, and healthy wildlife. The other’s operations,
despite apparent effort, were in difficulty. Furthermore, while the first also
had other successful economic enterprises, the second had generated little
in the way of business activity. In other words, while both were pursuing
economic development, their outcomes were markedly different. But—at
263
15
Becoming Public Sociology:
Indigenous Nations,
Dialogue, and Change
Stephen Cornell
264 Chapter 15
least in Kalt’s information—there were few differences between the two
situations that might explain the divergent outcomes. He wondered if social
factors might be involved.
I knew a little of the histories of these two nations and was struck by the
fact that the one having difficulty had suffered some of the strictest controls
that late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century federal administration had
ever imposed on an Indian nation. For decades, reservation administrators
had systematically suppressed Indigenous leadership on that reservation
and had taken other steps, usually in the name of assimilation, that thor-
oughly disrupted much of the social fabric of the community. Such actions
were common in the treatment of American Indians at the time, but they
had been extreme in this case. The more successful nation, meanwhile,
had had a very different experience. While its social organization had not
escaped the negative impacts of external controls, those controls had been
less severe, leaving much of the Indigenous leadership structure not only in-
tact but involved in decision-making. I could only speculate on the specific
connections, but perhaps these different histories played a role—decades
later—in the divergent outcomes.
We talked about this and the general pattern of economic development
on Indian lands, commonly known as Indian Country. We knew that some
nations were doing significantly better than others. The more we talked, the
more intrigued we were by the possibility of other cases like those Kalt had
found, where differences in economic assets or opportunities did a poor
job of explaining variable economic performance. By the end of lunch, we
had outlined a research project on Indian reservation economic develop-
ment. We imagined a comparative look at a set of reservations, including
some that were doing well economically and some doing less well. What
explained the pattern?
In subsequent weeks, we drafted a research proposal and went searching
for support. Eventually, with a grant from the Ford Foundation, we estab-
lished the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.
Little did I know that more than twenty years later, we would still be work-
ing on topics traceable to that lunch in 1986, or that I would be doing what
today we call public sociology.
In this chapter I briefly describe our research and its early findings. I then
discuss how those findings and the response to them pushed us into public
sociology, which, according to Michael Burawoy (2005a:9) in his 2004
American Sociological Association presidential address, “strikes up a dia-
logic relation between sociologist and public in which the agenda of each is
brought to the table, in which each adjusts to the other.” Finally, I consider
the relationship of this effort to the other forms of sociology—policy, criti-
cal, and professional—that Burawoy identifies.
264 Chapter 15
Becoming Public Sociology 265
RESEARCHING AMERICAN INDIAN
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
The Indigenous peoples of the United States form a set of nations, or tribes,
that occupy a common legal and political position in the United States but
carry with them distinctive histories, cultures, and contemporary circum-
stances. Located on lands commonly called reservations and subject ulti-
mately to federal controls, they retain significant rights of self-determination
and self-governance based on their inherent sovereignty and on treaties signed
with the United States, congressional legislation, and federal court decisions.
These rights include such things as setting citizenship criteria, making and
enforcing laws, managing their lands and civil affairs, choosing their forms
of government, and engaging in a wide array of other governance functions,
from environmental regulation and business permitting to issuing bonds and
creating their own educational systems.
While the majority of self-identified American Indians today reside in non-
reservation, urban areas, a major portion of the Indian population chooses to
remain on reservations. In the aggregate, this reservation-based population is
among the poorest in the United States. In the 1970s, the U.S. Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare described rural Indians as “in a class of pov-
erty by themselves” (1974:v). Three decades later, despite significant improve-
ment, that population remains, on average, exceedingly poor (Taylor and Kalt
2005). But it is not uniformly poor. While some of this has to do with reserva-
tion-based gaming operations, not all of it does. By the late 1980s, well before
widespread gaming impacts, some Indian nations were doing much better
than others (Cornell and Kalt 2000; Taylor and Kalt 2005; Harvard Project on
American Indian Economic Development 2007). We wanted to know why.
Our research strategy had two prongs. One used census and other quan-
titative data to search for causal factors in the pattern of socioeconomic
change across reservations. The other used fieldwork with a sample of
nations—both more “successful” and less—in search of factors that might
not show up in the quantitative analysis and of insights that could help us
better understand what the numbers meant.
On the quantitative side, we used census data from 1970, 1980, and
eventually 1990 and 2000, as well as Bureau of Indian Affairs labor force
data and Indian Health Service data, to investigate changes in economic
and social indicators over time. Such data are often of poor quality, but
they gave us insights into longitudinal patterns, and they helped us identify
cases of particular interest where the patterns seemed unusual.
We based our field sample on three considerations: guesses at what
factors might be important (size, location, natural-resource endow-
ments, educational attainment, etc.); our identification, partly through
266 Chapter 15
the quantitative analysis, of puzzles—such as the one we first discussed
at lunch—where development patterns were unexpected; and our existing
connections to Indian Country. This mixed bag of criteria was unorthodox
but realistic. We knew we could not simply pick a random sample of na-
tions and expect to walk in the door and do research; few tribes would
allow it. We also expected that much of the research payoff would come
in systematic comparisons of similarly situated nations pursuing similar
goals but with different outcomes.
The result was a nearly unmanageable sample: twelve nations that we
hoped to spend time with. But over the next several years, we and our
colleagues, including research assistants, looked at all twelve, although
we spent more time with some than others. But even this ambitious
sample quickly grew. As Indian nations heard about our research, some
approached us, enlarging our knowledge base as tribal councilors, program
and business managers, employees, and other citizens told us their devel-
opment goals and experiences. Well before the end of that first grant, we
had gathered substantial information from more than two dozen nations,
and the number kept rising as our research expanded in subsequent years,
embracing not only American Indian nations but Canadian First Nations
as well.
This project continues today through a network of researchers, partly at
Harvard but increasingly—owing to my current affiliation and Harvard’s
indifference to such work in Indian Country—through the Native Nations
Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, a unit of the University
of Arizona that we started in 2001 with Ford Foundation support and in
cooperation with the Morris K. Udall Foundation. Our research program
has expanded but remains linked to our original question about differential
outcomes and to our first set of research findings. These can be summarized
under three broad headings:
1
Sovereignty or Jurisdiction
We soon found evidence of a turnaround point in the economic his-
tories of many Indian nations—variable across tribes but appearing with
growing frequency after the mid-1970s—when the nation itself moved
into the driver’s seat in its affairs, displacing the federal government, which
for generations had been the primary decision-maker on Indian lands. As
Indian nations took over substantive decision-making roles, development
decisions began to reflect Indigenous knowledge and relationships and
tribal priorities instead of federal ones. Most importantly, decision-makers
began to experience directly the consequences of their decisions, creating an
accountability missing from the federal Indian affairs decision process. This
Becoming Public Sociology 267
change was not, in and of itself, sufficient to produce economic progress,
but in case after case, it appeared to be a necessary condition for it.
Capable Governance
But we also saw a critical institutional component to the pattern of change.
Many nations had moved aggressively in recent years to take over decision-
making from the federal government, but fewer of them had backed up this
assertion of rights to self-determination with adequate attention to how those
rights would be exercised. Moving decision-making power into Indigenous
hands appeared to produce sustained, positive effects only where there were
capable and stable governing institutions that could effectively exercise that
power. This meant that the nation had to establish clear, dependable rules
that could deliver fairness and efficiency in administrative decisions and im-
plementation; fairness and efficiency in the resolution of disputes; and control
over internal political interference in tribal programs and business activity.
Cultural Match
The institutional finding fit other work on development at the time (e.g.,
North 1990, Oberschall 1990, Knack and Keefer 1995, Evans and Rauch
1999). But the solution to the institutional challenge was not simply to
import Western institutions into Indigenous societies. This had been tried
by federal governments in the United States and Canada, which granted
Native nations limited self-governing power but only through largely im-
posed, dominant-society institutions that often didn’t work in Indigenous
contexts. Instead, effective governance appeared to depend in part on a
match between formal governing institutions and informal community
understandings about how authority should be organized and exercised.
We called this “cultural match.” The point was not simply to “get the in-
stitutions right,” as economists might argue, nor to “get the culture right,”
as federal officials, frustrated with cultures very different from their own,
might say. The point was to get the fit right between formal institutions
and contemporary Indigenous political culture (e.g., Cornell and Kalt 1995,
1997b). Only then would people view their government as truly theirs and
grant it the legitimacy necessary to its success.
In short, Indian nations did better at addressing economic issues when
they had substantive decision-making power and backed up that power
with capable governing institutions that had legitimacy with their own
peoples. These results became the basis of professional publications and
pointed to additional research directions that we began to follow up. But in
the meantime, another dimension of the project had begun to emerge.
268 Chapter 15
WHAT CAN TRIBES DO?
From day one, we had in mind something more than a research project.
We received unanticipated support from our first major funder. In 1986,
Norm Collins oversaw the Ford Foundation’s poverty programs. We had
sent him—and people at other foundations—our proposal. It was not the
recommended way to seek funding: neither of us knew Collins; we had no
established relationship; our letter was the equivalent of a cold call. To our
surprise, Collins called back. He asked a few questions and then suggested
we come down to New York to talk it over. As we sat in his office and
outlined our ideas, his interest grew. But one thing concerned him. If we
support this, he said, I want it to lead to something Indian nations can use.
This can’t simply be about academic publications. It has to be about what
Indian nations can do to address their own poverty.
Collins knew research would be critical to that goal, that producing
something Indian nations could use would require, first, making sense of
the pattern of reservation poverty. His concerns coincided with our own
ideas. At that original lunch, we had realized that if we could explain dif-
ferential economic outcomes in Indian Country, and if the explanation in-
volved factors over which Indian nations exercised some control, we would
have something of practical value to those nations. This became a central
purpose of the project: a search for insights that Indian nations could use.
Furthermore, my work on Indian political activism had persuaded me that
few nations would talk to us unless they saw benefit in doing so. During my
field research on Indian political movements, more than one tribal citizen
had said something like, “we’ve been studied to death and don’t have much
to show for it. If you don’t help us, why should we help you?”
These concerns shaped the course of our research and the activities that
emerged from it. But in the beginning, we had little idea of how to be use-
ful to Indian Country. The goal was there, but the project at first took a
more standard form, reflecting intellectual curiosity. It outlined a way to
get answers to our core question—how to explain differences in economic
performance by American Indian nations—but said little about how we
might turn such explanation to tribal advantage.
Furthermore, our early encounters with Indian Country were mixed.
We were cordially received on several reservations during a preliminary
field trip, but in Rapid City, South Dakota, a small group of Indigenous
leaders gave us something of a dressing down. They were skeptical of our
commitment and afraid we might emulate some other academics: arrive in
Indian Country, write career-enhancing papers, and disappear. They also
worried about the impacts of our research. There’s a lot at stake here, they
said. The biggest single force shaping events in Indian Country is federal
Becoming Public Sociology 269
Indian policy. What if your research influences that? You won’t experience
the results. We will.
Two things began to alter this skepticism and change the nature of our
work. As our early research results came in, we shared them, with a focus
less on academic venues than on Indigenous ones, speaking at Indian
Country conferences on economic and community development and other
topics. Our results had practical implications for Indian nations, and we
began hearing from some of them who wanted to know more, asking us to
look at their situations in light of what we had learned. We were becom-
ing conduits for information, not only about our analyses but about what
was happening where. The national scope of our project was turning us
into a storehouse of information on tribal development efforts and their
results—models, tools, and innovations.
Before long, in response to tribal requests, we formalized some of these
conversations in an executive education program organized jointly, for a
time, with Northern Arizona University. Drawing on policy- and business-
school models, we organized intensive, two-day seminars for senior Native
leaders. The theme of these seminars was not so much “we’ve got answers”
as “here’s what we’ve learned, what do you think, and how can it be helpful
to you?” The curricular content was driven by our research, but much of the
interaction reflected the agendas of those who attended, adding their own
perspectives and searching for solutions to their nations’ challenges.
2
We also had something else of practical value to offer: a distinctive labor
force composed of graduate students in Harvard’s Master’s in Public Policy
program, whose curriculum required a real-world policy analysis for a real-
world client. We offered tribes the opportunity to propose projects for these
students. Many tribal governments face difficult policy challenges but lack
the resources to develop information that would help decision-makers
know what to do. If a nation proposed a topic amenable to student inquiry,
we looked for a graduate student to work on it. Such students were often
rookies in Indian topics, but they had good analytical skills, supervision,
and deadlines. Our funding allowed them to go into the field for a firsthand
examination of the issue at hand, but much of their work was by telephone
and internet. If the result was useless, the tribe’s cost was minimal, but if it
was good, the tribe had something useful it would not otherwise have pro-
duced. We have carried out some 300 such projects over 20 years, ranging
from building judicial systems to consolidating tribal lands. With permis-
sion from clients, we distributed the better reports, first in hard copy, then
on the web, so that useful information could be shared with other nations.
This combination of practical assistance and Indian Country interest in
our findings changed the nature of our relationships and, ultimately, of our
research.
270 Chapter 15
BECOMING PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY
By the early 1990s, we found ourselves engaged in an ongoing—if
intermittent—dialogue with Native communities about what they were
doing and could do to reclaim power over their affairs and use that
power to achieve their goals. In the early years, much of that dialogue
was preoccupied with economic development, a critical topic for most
Indian nations. Some tribes, learning that we were engaged in research
on “what works” in Indian Country, came looking for sure-fire develop-
ment strategies; others wanted to test their ideas against our results; some
wanted to be sure we didn’t ignore their concerns or achievements.
This dialogue had quick effects. It altered our conception of success. Our
interest in development and our use of available data led to an early focus
on common measures of economic performance such as employment, in-
come, and household poverty. But this drew criticism from Indian nations.
While all of them treated poverty as a massive problem, none saw develop-
ment in purely economic terms. To one degree or another, they measured
economic impacts against at least two other aspects of community life.
One was political. Indian nations hold a distinctive position within the
American polity. They have a status in some ways similar to, in some ways
different from, that of states, rooted in an inherent sovereignty that, while
limited by treaties, court decisions, and congressional actions, remains
substantial, evident in a distinctive set of rights that have not been extin-
guished. The protection and expansion of those rights is a priority concern
of Indian nations. This has direct effects on development strategies. For
most tribes, strategies that undermine such rights are suspect, even if they
promise increases in income or employment.
There was another concern as well. For most Indian nations, there are
also social dimensions to “success” involving the maintenance of social
relationships, cultural practice, and the physical space that constitutes
“home.” Some nations pay more attention to these things than others, but
for most, development strategies have to be balanced against their sociocul-
tural effects. In short, success in tribal terms was not simply about overcom-
ing poverty. It was about the maintenance of communities.
As this dialogue unfolded, we had to rethink what it was we were trying
to understand. Instead of asking about the factors that yield rising employ-
ment and incomes in Indian Country, for example—which is where we
started—we began asking about the factors that facilitate tribal success,
however defined. Our concern began as Indigenous economy but then
became Indigenous efficacy: the ability of Indigenous nations to effectively
pursue their own goals. The original articulation was ours, but its broaden-
ing came from interactions with Indian nations. This focus on tribal effi-
cacy, in turn, had a methodological effect, increasing our use of extended,
Becoming Public Sociology 271
qualitative case inquiry, although we still used quantitative techniques
where we could find adequate data.
Our growing dialogue with Indian nations also led us deeper into the
topic of governance. Our research pointed to constitutions—the founda-
tional, written or unwritten rules by which communities organize them-
selves to achieve their goals—as critical to community success. But Indian
nations wanted more. What kinds of rules or governance strategies were
likely to work where and when? They had heard that some nations were
integrating Indigenous political culture into contemporary governance so-
lutions. How were they doing it?
We began not only gathering Indigenous governance models but trying
to understand their logic. A parliamentary system, for example, worked
well on a reservation where the U.S. government, in the nineteenth cen-
tury, had forced three nations to settle together. One nation was larger
than the other two. A directly elected chief executive would mean that the
larger tribe might always control that position, undermining its legitimacy
with the other two tribes. So the three nations instead adopted a system
in which representatives elected from each tribe to a joint council selected
a councilor to serve as chair. Thus the chief executive was beholden to a
multi-tribe legislature, downplaying intertribal boundaries and avoiding a
winner-take-all election. Meanwhile, another nation had a governing sys-
tem that, without benefit of written constitution, elections, or formal legal
codes, managed a productive economy and social programs and effectively
navigated complex relationships with federal and state agencies. The key to
its success, we concluded, was the enormous legitimacy that this system,
rooted in a theocratic political culture established over many generations,
had among its own citizens. Those citizens shared a set of normative ex-
pectations that—despite the lack of formal, written prescription—specified
how things would be done, provided stability in governance, and prevented
leaders from using their positions to advance their interests instead of the
community’s (Cornell and Kalt 1997b).
Another project responded to requests from several nations that were
writing or rewriting tribal constitutions. They sought a forum for sharing
ideas about constitution-building. We organized symposia—and eventually
a book—where Native leaders and academics joined to discuss constitu-
tional innovations, the role of law in Indigenous communities, and ways to
smooth potentially conflicted reform processes (Lemont 2006).
This kind of cooperative and dialogic search for information and insights
allowed us not only to see institutions where we hadn’t seen them before
but to understand how different sets of culturally matched institutions
might yield similarly positive results, and how those institutions might be
created. It also meant that we ended up sharing much of our work with
Native audiences before sharing it with our own peers. Those audiences