In Spring, 2006, my final semester of teaching before retiring in May, 2006, I will be teaching Sociology 518, the graduate course in Social Data Analysis, as well as leading the ABle student problem-solving group. A syllabus for Sociology 518 for Spring, 2006 can be found here.
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Since my days
as an undergraduate at Michigan State and a
graduate student at Michigan, I have always
enjoyed doing research and writing about it. My major research interests today
are in the area of race and ethnic relations, with a particular interest in the
extent, causes, and consequences of racial housing segregation. In the early
1990s, I also participated in a series of four surveys concerning Iben
Browning's pseudoscientific prediction of a damaging earthquake in the central
United States, and the short and long-term effects of that prediction on
earthquake awareness, concern, and preparedness in the region. I was fortunate
to have the opportunity to co-organize a conference of researchers who studied
the Browning prediction, and to guest edit a special issue of the
International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters in
November, 1993 that reported many of these studies. My book, Earthquake
Fears, Predictions, and Preparations in Mid-America, published in 1998 by
the SIU Press, reports the results of the four surveys.
I am also the author of three major college textbooks in introductory sociology, race and ethnic relations, and social
problems, all published by Prentice Hall.
The Fifth Edition of the
introductory sociology book is now available. The Fifth Edition of the race and ethnic relations textbook was published in 2005 and is available in both printed and electronic formats. Both of the latter books are coming out soon in new sixth editions; more information is available here.
My recent publications include the following:
- (with Gregory D. Squires) "Fences and Neighbors: Segregation in Twenty-first Century America."
- Contexts: Understanding People in Their Social Worlds 4, 1 (Winter, 2005): 33-39.
- "Residential Interracial and Exposure Indices: Mean vs. Median Indices and the Difference it Makes."
- Sociological Quarterly 46, 1 (Winter, 2005): 19-45.
- "Racial Housing Segregation in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area: Past, Present, and Future."
- In Terrence Jones and Brady Baybeck (eds.),
St. Louis Metromorphosis. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 2004.
- Majority-Minority Relations, fifth edition.
- Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005.
- Sociology,
fifth edition.
- Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 2003.
- “An Attack on Iraq is Not Justified.” Pp. 27-31 in William Dudley (ed.),
- Iraq: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Thompson-Gale, 2003.
- "Contesting Our Everyday Work Lives: The Retention of Minority and
- Working Class Sociology Undergraduates" (2001 Midwest Sociological Society Presidential Address). The Sociological Quarterly 43 (Winter, 2002): 1-25.
- Earthquake Fears, Predictions, and Preparations in
Mid-America.
- Southern Illnois University Press, 1998.
- "Race Still Matters: The Minimal Role of Income and Housing Cost as Causes
of Housing
- Segregation in St. Louis, 1990." Urban Affairs Review
(formerly Urban Affairs Quarterly) (November, 1995) 244-254.
- (with Cui-xia Zhang), "Gender and the Distribution of Household Work: A
Comparison of
- Self-Reports by Female College Faculty in the United States and China."
Journal of Comparative Family Studies 26 (Summer, 1995): 195-205.
- "Sustained Preparedness or Cry Wolf: New Madrid Earthquake Awareness and
Preparedness
- Trends, October, 1990 - May, 1993." Earthquake Mitigation Across the
Nation: Proceedings, Fifth U.S. National Conference on Earthquake
Engineering, Chicago, July 10-14, Volume III. Oakland, CA: Earthquake
Engineering Research Institute (1994).
- "Twentieth Century Wars: Some Short-Term Effects on Domestic Intergroup
Relations."
- Sociological Inquiry 64, 2 (Spring, 1994): 214-237.
- "Public, Media, and Institutional Responses to the Iben Browning
Earthquake Prediction:
- Editor's Introduction." International Journal of Mass Emergencies
and Disasters 11, 3 (November, 1993): 271-277.
- (with Hugh D. Barlow, Marvin S. Finkelstein, and Larry Riley) "Earthquake
Hysteria, Before
- and After: A Survey and Follow-up on Public Response to the Browning
Forecast." International Journal of Mass Emeregencies and
Disasters 11, 3 (November, 1993): 305-321.
A full list of my publications can be seen on my vita. Links to abstracts of
the journal articles listed above will be added soon. If you're interested, come
back for another visit. And if you're really interested, call or email me and I'll send you a copy of the
complete article.
Students or faculty using any of my textbooks are invited and encouraged to
send me comments by email to jfarley@siue.edu. Your comments will help me
improve the books when I revise them for new editions.
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I believe
that service is an important part of a state university faculty member's
responsibilities, and that in fulfilling this responsibility, we should never
lose sight of the goals of improving the quality of life for the average citizen
and of encouraging equal opportunity in society. I further believe that the
knowledge created by sociology is of its greatest value when it is applied to
these objectives. Accordingly, I have been very active in public and university
service, directing my activity toward a variety of goals related to these
objectives. Among these goals have been the creation and development of a strong
fair housing organization in the St. Louis/Metro East area, the encouragement of
the larger community to value diversity and equal opportunity, and the promotion
of participatory governance and democratic decisionmaking at SIUE. My recent
service activities include:
- Metropolitan St. Louis
Equal Housing Opportunity Council (EHOC)
- Co-founder, Board of Directors Member since June, 1992. President,
1992-1998. Vice President, 2000-presnt. Previously, Co-Chair, Confluence St.
Louis Valuing Our Diversity Housing Subcommittee. This fair housing organization, founded in
1992, works to combat discrimination in the sale, rental, advertising, and
financing of housing in the greater St. Louis, Missouri-Illinois area, and to
educate the public about its fair housing rights and responsibilities. If you
would like further information or if you believe that you may have been
discriminated against, you are urged to contact EHOC at (314) 725-5900 or at
(800) 555-3951.
- Faculty Senate, Southern Illinois
University at Edwardsville (SIUE)
- Member, 1982-1985 and 1992-1996; Executive Committee Member, 1993-1996;
President 1994-1995. The SIUE Faculty Senate is the official representative of
the SIUE faculty in all university governance matters, and has primary
responsiblity for academic governance at SIUE.
- SIUE Human Relations Advisory Committee
- Member from the Committee's inception in 1990 until 1996; member of
subcommittee that drafted SIUE's Diversity Plan which is now in the process of
being implemented. The Human Relations Advisory Committee acts in an advisory
capacity to the SIUE Director of Human Relations, and assists in the
development of university policies and plans relating to diversity and equal
opportunity.
- Focus St. Louis Valuing Diversity Task Force, 1999-2001
- This Task Force of 30 diverse citizens of the St. Louis area, under the
auspices of Focus St. Louis conducted
a comprehensive study of racial inequality and racial polarization in the St.
Louis area, examining trends since the last such study 12 years ago and making
recommendations on ways to move the area toward greater racial equality. An
implementation committee will be put in place by the end of 2001 to take
actions to implement the Task Force's recommendations.
- Community presentations on diversity and fair housing
- I regularly make presentations to community and educational groups on
diversity, fair housing, and related topics. Call or email me if your organization is
interested.
- President, Illinois
Sociological Association, 1997-98
- Responsible for planning of 1998 annual meetings which were held at the
SIUE East St. Louis Center, October 14 and 15, 1998.
- President, Midwest Sociological
Society, 2000-2001.
- Program Chair for the 2000 annual meetings, held in Chicago, April 19-22.
I then served as President for the 2000-2001 year, and delivered my
presidential address, "Contesting Our Everyday Work Lives: The Retention of
Minority and Working Class Sociology Majors" at the 2001 annual meetings in
St. Louis.
I am currently a coordinating council member and a research
fellow at the SIUE Institute for Urban Research. In the past, I also held a
joint appointment for several years with SIUE's office of Regional Research and
Development Services, a public service unit on campus. My projects there
included focus groups for public housing residents concerning their housing,
service, and security needs; an assessment of housing needs of people with
disabilities in Madison County, Illinois; identification of medically
underserved areas in central and southwest Illinois; and development of a
proposal for a program to reduce teenage pregnancy in the city of St. Louis.
Some of the research projects mentioned above were also
partially supported by RRDS.
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Sometimes,
equal opportunity, democratic decisionmaking, and protecting the environment can
only be acheived by organized collective efforts for social change. When wealth
and power are amassed at the expense of others, or of the environment, or of the
general quality of life, such efforts are often essential: Sociology tells us
that those who have great wealth and power do not often willingly accept changes
or reforms that threaten their wealth or power. Thus, I am proud of my
participation over the past three decades in a wide variety of organized
collective efforts for social change. Some recent examples include:
- Support, together with Rev. Jesse Jackson, local politcal leaders and
union members, and hundreds of area residents, of workers on strike for a
decent wage in 1999 against Beverly Farm in Godfrey. More information on this
important struggle can be found here.
- Participation in campus and community efforts to speak and act
collectively in support of the value of diversity, when Ku Klux Klan and other
hate group activity occurred in the Edwardsville and Alton Illinois areas in
1992, 1993, and 1994.
- Cooperative efforts with colleagues, students, and campus workers to
support the rights of SIUE clerical workers to a decent wage and working
conditions, when those rights were under attack from a prevous SIUE
administration. And I was proud to help organize efforts to protect SIUE
students from threats of reprisals when they marched in support of those
clerical workers. I am pleased that a much more enlightened approach has been
used by more recent SIUE administrations. The new spirit of cooperation that
emerged on the SIUE campus during the chancellorship of Nancy Belck is
powerful testimony to what can be accomplished when campus decisionmaking is
collective and participatory rather than heirarchical and autocratic. We hope
this style of leadership will continue with our new Chancellor, David Werner.
- Participation in efforts to prevent the elimination of jobs and the loss
of wages, benefits, and union representation by contracting out. Nothing
represents a greater threat to hard-won employee rights and benefits in the
United States than the current trend toward use of part-time and temporary
workers. These efforts included participating in a successful campaign against
contracting out of SIUE employees' jobs in 1993.
- Organizing a successful effort by the Faculty Senate Leaders of Illinois
Public Universities to secure full funding from the Illinois legislature of
the Illinois Board of Higher Education's requested level of approriations for
public universities for the 1995-96 school year.
- Speaking out in a variety of forums in support of affirmative action;
against ultraconservative extremists who want to de-fund public education; in
support of the need for a Black Student Association in predominantly white
universities; and in support of governmental funding of non-profit fair
housing organizations. Some of the commentary pieces I've written are now
available on the World Wide Web:
I'll add links to additional items in later revisions of this
Web page; come back and visit soon if you're interested.
Does some of this sound interesting? If you think so, keep two
things in mind:
- YOU CAN DO IT, TOO!
- IT'S FUN! (WITH A PURPOSE!)
Helpful Hint
There are lots of sites on the World Wide Web that offer
more information on activist organizations and opportunities to get involved.
For some of them, see Activism under Farley's
Favorite Web Links.
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As important as they are, academics, service, and activism are
not all there is to life. When not engaged in one or more of the above, I enjoy
snow skiing, fishing,
hiking, and weather and
nature photography.
Have you ever tried snow skiing? It sure beats sitting inside and complaining
about how cold it is. Personally, I know of no greater thrill than speeding down
a snowy slope at full tilt but under control, and I know of nothing more
tranquil than cross-country skiing in the silence of the woods after a fresh
snowfall. To find out more, contact your local ski club. If you live in
the St. Louis area, you can reach then at 314-851-6710, or visit the new St. Louis Ski
Club Web Page.
If you're one of those people I can't comprehend who truly can't deal with
cold weather, try taking a long warm weather hike in the woods or standing by a
lake at midnight and seeing more stars than you could count in a thousand years.
It's good for the body and good for the soul.
When you're back in the city from your trip to the mountains or the woods, go
check out one of your local blues
venues. This uniquely American form of music is finally getting the public
attention it deserves. And if you're lucky enough to live in St. Louis, Chicago, New Orleans, Kansas City, or Montreal, check out
some really great music at your local blues or jazz and blues festival. All of
those cities have topnotch festivals.
Finally, whatever you're doing just for fun, remember this: Life's a
mountain, not a beach!
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On October 15 and 16, 1998, the annual meetings of the Illinois Sociological
Association were held at SIUE's East St. Louis Center. Here are some pictures.
In December, 1997, my close friend and college roomate Ed Clark passed away
suddenly. Here is a Web page
dedicated to his memory.
On August 30, 1997, I was married to Dr. Alice Hall Petry
of the SIUE English Department!
On April 13, 1998, a tornado hit Edwardsville. Several businesses, a home,
and a farm building suffered serious damage. Here are some photos of the damage.
This page last updated April 16, 2009. Since I am now Professor Emeritus and am no longer teaching, updates of this page will be few and far between. Sorry about the dead links! For my current Web page, please visit www.johnefarley.com.
Materials appearing on this Web page and any of my pages linked to it
represent my views and opinions only. No material appearing here represents any
view or position of Southern Illinois Univeristy at Edwardsville. Also, material
on pages linked from here that are maintained by others represent the opinions
of the people who posted that material, not necessarily mine.
My vita is now available online -
updated April, 2009! You can view it here!
Teaching
Research and
Publications
Community and
Professional Service
Activism and
Social Change
Special Photo
Galleries
Just for Fun
Farley's
Favorite Web Links