Interview to Dr.

Scott Fitzgerald

Associate Professor, Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Studies

Fretwell 485E

704-687-7805

sfitzger@uncc.edu

Interviewer:

Thanks for your time. Dr. Fitzgerald. The first question I would like to ask you is which one of your
research projects would you like us to display on our website? And do you have some suggested reading
that we could summarize for the public policy blog?

Dr. Fitzgerald:

Okay. Oh, all right. I think I published a book a few years ago called "Middle Class Meltdown in America"
and I am currently working on a revision of a third edition of the book. The book focuses on the
American middle class, economics, politics, and social situations from the 1970s through contemporary
times. The first and the earlier editions focus through 2014, and so now we're going to be updating over
what has happened over the last four or five years. That is probably what the main thing I would like to
focus on. I am a sociologist and particularly sort of a political sociologist, looking at the intersections of
the economy, politics and society. I have sort of three main areas of research. Some of them are more
relevant to public policy than others. One area of research is looking at economic inequality. My earlier
work had been on homelessness and public policy, as well as poverty and policy. Then, over the last
decade or so, that work has focused more on the American middle class. So, I am looking at that group
rather than just the low end of the hierarchy.

If we really want to understand what’s happening in a society or in the economy, we need to look
beyond simply those at the extremes: those who are doing well and those who are doing horrible. If we
have a robust economy and society, that being met, that strong middle class should be there, but in
many ways in the US that has not existed for a while. That raises some broader questions about
everything from workplace policy to taxation to so pretty much most aspects of political, social and
economic life. And then, another branch of my research is focusing on social movements, both thinking
about change more broadly, but then also looking at about how and why people get involved and for
movements for justice, for equality, looking at how social movements can affect change, both in terms
of creating cultural and social change, but also what effect social movements have on policy.

And so, much of my work in social movements has been focusing on what's called “frame analysis”
within the social movements’ literature, looking at how both movements and opponents, create
understandings about what the problem is, offer solutions, justify why getting people involved. And that
involves both media analysis and textual analysis, and so looking at that sort of narrative or cultural part
of social movements is a main part of that work. Then, on my third area of work, is looking at religion,
particularly in the United States, much of that work has focused particularly on conservative protestants
and the ways that group can affect a variety of outcomes. And so, I've looked at how religion can
encourage or discourage protest or social action. I've also, in a conservative sense, particularly tried to
answer the puzzle of why, in the United States, if you're raised conservative Protestant, you on average
have lower educational attainment and job attainment or status attainment and income. So,
understanding how religion and cultural worldviews can shape larger life course issues, in terms of when
you get married, when you have kids, when you start your career. And so, it's really connecting
inequality, understanding the life course in inequality and connecting it with religion. In those three
areas of work that I do, most of my projects combine two of them, some of it was about religion and
movements, some of them are about religion at an inequality, some are about inequality and social
movements. So that's, that's it in a nutshell.

Interviewer:

How those your research affect the world? What are its broader impacts on public policy?

Dr. Fitzgerald:

I paused to answer that because I think realistically I'm not sure how much my research affects the
world and I would like it to, and something that I, in the last four or five years in particular. I'm trying to
focus more attention on. So one of the things is I had an opportunity to give our colleges personally
speaking, talk, about four years ago, about my book “Middleclass Meltdown“, to a couple of hundred
people at the center city building mostly from the larger area. I also did an hour long talk on Charlotte
talks with Mike Collins. I wrote an open Ed for the Charlotte Business Journal. And then because of that,
I ended up getting invitations from a variety of different groups across Charlotte to come talk about
these issues, because the book is a nonpartisan sort of examination of American economic and political
life. And it was the first time that I really sort of had this opportunity to talk to a much wider audience
rather than talking to other scholars or the teachers, and instead talking to the public. I found that to be
a very rewarding conversation and something that I'm looking for opportunities to do more of. I think
that, like many academics, I've spent too much time just talking with other academics, about a lot of
these issues. And so I'm trying to find ways to, to branch out from that.

Interviewer:

Do you think that your research helps us understand why we're having a conservative push in politics
and all around the world and in the United States?

Dr. Fitzgerarld:

Yeah. I think I it can help understand that and recognizing that whatever phenomenon we're looking at,
particularly, whatever's going on right now in the US or more broadly, it's really a part of a larger set of
forces and trajectories and so that we can see that sort of the rise of both of neo fascism or right wing
movements across the world are, though the specific context might change, there's also these broader
forces which are connected to economic opportunity. They're connected to political freedom. They are
connected to status and power. And so, I think these issues, which are at the heart of political sociology
and the things I studied are really at the heart of what these larger forces are.

Interviewer:

And I guess this increases polarization, right?

Dr. Fitzgerald:

Yes. And I think in addition to the economics part and the politics part, right? There's also, I think one as
a sociologist, who studies those things, I think it's also valuable to think about the cultural part or the
narrative part, because we also see during this time a sort of increase in antagonistic and corrosive
dialogue, right? A lack of civility and the ways in which people treat each other and talk to each other,
has a profound effect and it's both a cause and effect of these larger issues. And so one of the things as I
love about my job as a professor is that in my classroom, I teach on all of these sort of difficult topics and
I also teach courses on ethics, and I'm really focused on giving students a space to think and to listen to
each other. So rather than encouraging people to develop an opinion and defended an opinion, it's
about how can we learn more about things? And in the classroom, I have much more control of that
dialogue. I can create that space and it's really rewarding. I teach for first year students all the way
through PhD students. I get a range of students and particularly for our undergraduate students, many
of them respond positively to that environment because they are bombarded every day with social
media, with all this stuff and they don't really know how to make sense of it.

And to be in a space where they're specifically told, I'm not going to ask what you think about this, I'm
not going to put you on the spot, but let's learn what is this question? what is the issue? What can the
data tell us? Why would someone think that? And where you're just taking that space to try and
understand things. There is a real need for that for our students and our society. I think that's one of
the things that both academics and researchers, but particularly as a teacher, that we can contribute.

Interviewer:

What do you hope to accomplish in your research career?

Dr. Fitzgerald:

That's a good question. I don't have a canned answer for that. I haven't really thought about that. Well
one is I want to contribute to the body of knowledge and I had studied a variety of things. I had been an
artist, I had been an English major, I studied philosophy. I got my master's degree in political science. I
became a sociologist, and so I value looking at the world in many ways. But why ended up as a
sociologist, as a social scientist is that I think there is value and there is need for the careful, objective
study of things, and so in my work I try to be very careful of producing that type of high-quality work.

In other aspects of my life, I view myself as an activist and an advocate for equality, for justice, for a
variety of things. But in my work, it must stand by itself, I believe it must stand on its own. There are
those who are activists, scholars. I'm not an activist scholar, and what I mean by that is simply I want,
and I realize many of those distinctions are artificial and it's a very complicated, you know, begins. And
in no way am I trying to denounce those who are, because I think it is possible to do those well. I'm just
much more comfortable in sort of when I want students who are working with me or collaborators, that
we should care about what we're studying. But then that care is what makes us want to do the best
work possible, rather than we care about it, so we want to find a certain thing, or we want to argue a
certain thing. But that's not our jobs as social scientists. Our jobs are to care about what we're studying,
so we're very deliberate and do the best social science, so people can then use that to make informed
decisions.

Interviewer:

So science must be done for an intrinsic motivation in mind, not for the prestige or to support your
political view. It's has a more noble mission.

Dr. Fitzgerald:

Yes, value in and of itself. And then, ideally, in my view of how this should work, we can take that
knowledge that's created and then, with careful deliberation, at that stage, it's value label, its
assumptions, it's about ideas, how the world should work, and those are the things that within society
need to be discussed. But there is no automatic trump to that, there is no automatic, one should be
better than the other. Right. That's part of what democracy is, what dialogue is, and what knowledge is.
That you then have a vision of what the world should be. And combining that vision with that knowledge
is how we make good decisions.

Interviewer:

What makes you research interdisciplinary and why it is important?

Dr. Fitzgerald:

I think what makes my work interdisciplinary is that within any project I'm doing, I'm drawing theory not
just as a sociologist, but also from political science, from anthropology, from media studies, from variety
of disciplines that have valuable ways of looking and analyzing the world. And then also, at least, some
of my work is very policy relevant, right? Thinking about how do we respond to the shrinking middle
class; how do we respond to unjust laws? How do we respond to religious freedom or persecution? So
even when the study that I've published in and of itself is not about policy, all the topics that I study are
all policy relevant. They're all within policy domains. And there's opportunities with graduate students,
or with other collaborators, to explore that in greater detail and to think about more policy relevant
studies based on those areas.

Interviewer:

Thank you very much for your time.