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For my subway commute this morning, I read Lorrie Moore’s essay in this month’s New York Review of Books: “In the Life of the Wire.” The show is a hit in the social sciences, where, as one telling exchange suggests, a fierce debate for and against is underway. There’s nary a professor or student interested in crime, poverty, education, and a host of other inner city concerns that doesn’t have an opinion. Most people focus on what the show teaches us. But there’s also some lessons here about how to study society, particularly from the perspective of an ethnographer. One of my favorite clips is this interaction between Bubbles, a police informant, and Sydnor, an undercover police officer about to head out into the field. In this instance, Bubbles is the expert, Sydnor the novice. The lesson begins at about the forty-five second mark. Watch and learn.

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