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Citizen SociologistsDavid Stark, ArthurLehman Professorof Sociologyand InternationalAffairs, was in themidst of fieldworkstudying traders atthe World Financial Center on September11, 2001. On the day itself, he and DanielBeunza, a graduate student working withhim, decided to stay on campus to discussthe project instead of heading downtown.When the WFC was destroyed, Starkassumed their work had come to anindefinite end. He waited until tradingresumed six days later to call his contactat the company, now operating in NewJersey, and ask if everyone was all right.When Stark said he would call againafter time had passed, his contact quicklyreplied, “No, you won’t.” He insistedStark and Beunza resume their researchimmediately. He told Stark that theymust “witness what was going on in therecovery room in New Jersey. We werethe only social scientists working in [theWFC then], and he told me that it wasof historical importance.” Being invitedinto a community at such a time was “thehighest honor to an ethnographer.”The uniqueness of the situationyielded questions and observations Starkwould not have come across otherwise.In the end, his research with the tradersfocused on recovery as a form of innovationwithin an organization. “Recovery isa response to extreme uncertainty,” and itrequires a group of people to respond tochallenge in new ways. It quickly becameclear to Stark and his students that suchinnovation was not confined to organizationsalone. It could be studied in allof lower Manhattan. Stark recalls oneevening in October 2001 when he and hiswife and fellow social scientist MoniqueGirard hosted a dinner with students,and Girard declared that the “time forgiving blood was over. We were socialscientists, and we needed to use our workto do something for the city.” It was a callto arms. Several students halted work ontheir dissertations and Stark and his wifeset aside projects in order to study theresponse and recovery efforts in the city.Stark remembers thinking, “We are here.There are important lessons to learn, andwe have to do this. It was an extension ofour understanding of what it meant to bea social scientist in New York at that time.We had to respond ourselves and takeresponsibility as citizens.”Their research focused on forms of,in Stark’s words, “public assemblies”—such as not-for-profit organizations, largecompanies, select professions, and publicdemonstrations—operating in downtown‘You can’t move around suffering. You have to move throughit. You have to acknowledge it before you can analyze it.’” Inretrospect, Clark is glad to have brought the NYU psychologistteam to the Narrative and Memory Project in its laterdevelopment. After a year of recording stories, the work hadbegun to wear on the interviewers and the offer of free therapysessions became a necessary resource. “It was a relief to me tohave someone to call if something happened in the field that Ineeded to talk about.”Despite its emotional impact, Seeley believes trauma studyis helpful to her work as an anthropologist and psychotherapist.“People’s subjectivities are important. It is very dangerouswhen we only look at disasters in a distanced or clinical way.I don’t think you have to take the emotion out of academicwork. Instead, we need to find ways to put emotion back in sowe can better understand what happens to those who experiencetraumatic events and to those who study them.” However,there is a balance between being open to emotion andtaking in too much. Seeley now teaches a course on trauma.While she encourages students not to shy away from traumastudy, she also warns that students with trauma in their backgroundshould take care if they decide to remain in the class.Like Seeley, Clark feels that emotion is necessary for theintegrity of research. It is not possible to separate oneself fromthe emotion of the work, and one should not wish to do so. “Apart of oral history is to not make that divorce. We will alwaysrespect the suffering of people and at the same time be able tostand back and use our brains to analyze.”Time is also beneficial. “It takes time to make meaning,”explains Clark. “Oral history is a process, not a product.” TheSeptember 11, 2001 oral history archives have been openfor more than a year. They have been used by students andresearchers, but their existence has remained relatively quiet.This may change after they are officially opened and Clark andLink back to contents page26 Superscript