Episode 137— Marco Garrido: "I kind of stumbled into being a professor."

With various interests, Associate Professor Marco Garrido was still determining his next steps after graduation and went off exploring the world. It was when he shared dinner tables with the poor and the rich that he finally found his research interest in the Philippines. Currently studying how people's daily experiences shape their understanding of democracy, Professor Garrido shares his thoughts on what career means and how he sees his role as a professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the University of Chicago.

Transcript

Stephen00:00
Hello, and welcome to The Course. I'm your host, Stephen, and today I'm speaking with Professor Marco Garrido of the Department of Sociology. Professor Garrido holds a master's from the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His research focuses on democracy, corruption, and politics, mainly in the Philippines, and he's the author of The Patchwork City, Class, Space, and Politics in Metro Manila. He's here today to talk about how early experiences like living in a squatter community or writing about boxing eventually led him to the field of sociology and to the University of Chicago.

Professor Garrido, thank you so much for joining us. How are you today?

Marco Garrido 00:38
 I'm well. My pleasure to be here, Stephen. Thanks for thanks for doing this.

Stephen00:43
Can you tell us what your position is at the university and just a little bit in your own words, how you, you know, would describe what you do?

Marco Garrido 00:51
 I'm an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. I'm also the director of undergraduate studies for the department of sociology so my main duties include research, teaching, various kinds of services, including directing the undergraduate program at the university.

Stephen01:12
So, you know, when you were around maybe like middle school, early high school age, I'm curious, what did you think you were going to be doing with your adult life?

Marco Garrido 01:21
 Well, definitely not being a professor. I hadn't even conceived of it to be honest, because I didn't have any role models for academia. And so, I kind of stumbled into being a professor, frankly. In middle school, I probably wanted to be some kind of writer or artist. 

I mean, secretly, I wanted to be some kind of rock star except I had no talent. All I had was a robust appreciation of different kinds of music. But yeah, so I imagined I'd be some kind of writer or some kind of, some kind of artistic field. 

Stephen02:03
I feel that.

Marco Garrido 02:04
 I could appreciate the hell out of music. So that's what I had going for me, but pretty much nothing else. 

Stephen02:13
Yeah, I'm sure some people would say that's all it takes. But assuming that you were not still like following the potential rockstar path at that point, like, was it during undergrad that you developed an interest in sociology? How did that come about?

Marco Garrido 02:26
 No, it wasn't. I was an English major. And in fact, it was not just an English major. I focused on creative writing poetry actually. And so I read a lot of poetry. I was passionate about it. I wrote poetry. I was on the path to writing a creative writing thesis, but I never finished it to think of it, I don't know what I wanted to do. I mean, that's not true. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I wanted to keep writing and be engaged in some kind of creative enterprises, creative work, but I wasn't sure what kind of career that would look like.

And all my friends, my roommates, they did some kind of consulting work, which back in the 90s was, you know, a lot of kids did who graduated from schools like Harvard, and so they made what seemed like a lot of money at the time to me. As for me, I had not planned at all.

And I don't offer this as a model for anybody, but I had not planned my future at all beyond graduating. And so I, after graduating from Harvard, I painted houses and, and I worked as something of a carpenter for $12 an hour at the time, which was an okay salary, again, in early 2000s, I graduated in 2000. I made enough money doing that to eventually take a trip to the Philippines. Now, why the Philippines? Because it was because, you know, I was born there, and I spent my childhood there. And I got it into my head that I wanted to go back. You know, I had applied for a fellowship to study poetry in the Philippines, but I didn't get it. So I didn't pursue, I didn't pursue that path. 

I went and I found an NGO doing development work to work with, but really, honestly, I was just after some kind of adventure. I really wasn't ready to start any kind of career path. So, you know, if my kids tell me that today, I would be mortified. That's the kind of kid I was back then. 

Stephen04:35
Well, and so yeah, I see that you got an MA in international peace studies. Was that kind of an outgrowth of…

Marco Garrido 04:42
 It's part of my accidental trajectory. So this was the most, it was a great program. But for me at the time, what really recommended it was it was free. And so it is a fellowship, it is a one year program and you get to live with people from all around the world so I, it was a small group, I had classmates from Iran, from Pakistan, and Indonesia, Vietnam, so on and so forth. And you get to talk about issues in your country under this broad rubric of key studies, which did include sociology. But again, even then I wasn't interested in it as such, sociology, political science, development studies. So I kind of did that to buy the time to do something interesting.

But before that I'd spent about a year or two in the Philippines. And then after that I went back to the Philippines to do even more work. So as I said, I worked as a, first as a development, in a development NGO. And so I did research for them. I wrote, and eventually I got a job as a freelance journalist.

And I wrote articles on everything from politics to boxing, Manny Pacquiao, or the conflict in the south of the country. And I got paid per article, which wasn't much, but it was enough to live decently as a person in your 20s in Manila, which was a lot of fun. 

Stephen06:48
You can support a certain lifestyle with that. 

Marco Garrido 06:50
 Well, especially in twenties, you know, you don't need much. So, you know, honestly, those were pretty happy days for me. At least that's how I remember them. 

Stephen06:59
Do you, I mean, do you feel like you got the adventure that you were looking for? 

Marco Garrido 07:03
 That's what I was looking for. I mean, that's definitely what I was looking for. In fact, it had been something of a theme. So in fact, you know, I was supposed to be class of 99, but I took a year off because, frankly, I was bored of college. And so I, what did I do?

I ended up working for a human rights organization in the Gaza Strip in 1997. So that was the time of the Oslo peace accords. So that was, it was relatively peaceful back then, but it was a life changing experience to say the least. 

I mean, it wasn't, I don't know if it was particularly dangerous, but, you know, our job in the human rights organization I worked for was to send these press releasees outraged about some kind of human rights abuse, but, you know, that would happen twice a week. 

I would see people get numb to real suffering to real pain. Just being in those conditions and seeing people go through humiliation, you know, I mean, all of that stuff had an effect. Primarily, it made me really appreciate college, and so when I came back, I was quite happy to be back in school and just working and just working on my studies, so it cured my boredom in college, and it made me very enthusiastic about my latter two years, but I can't say cured my hunger for adventure.

Because right, as I said right after, I graduated, once I had enough money, I packed my bags and ran away again. You know, one of the first places I ended up, actually before I even ended up in NGO, one of the first places I ended up was, in this peasant community. It was a squatter peasant community, kind of in the mountains outside of Manila. So this experience involved me living with very, very poor people who were squatting on land, who made their living by subsistence farming, really growing sweet potatoes, and having their crops periodically uprooted by the guards, hired by the owner of that land, right? 

So there were squatters in that land, their crops were uprooted and they grew potatoes, sweet potatoes to live. And I lived in those houses with them. And, you know, it was quite, it was difficult because I was ashamed to live off of that, off of people who have very little, you know, and they would gather what they would offer me, not only space, a place to sleep, you know, the best bed, the best areas in the house to sleep in, but also food. I was ashamed to be living off their generosity at that time.

So that was funny, apart from the fact that it is hard for other reasons. You know, I was hungry all the time. I lost 30 pounds. But again, you know, I suppose it was exactly what I was looking for. 

But eventually I got sick and I had to come back to the city and I ended up in a hospital for something in my, some virus in my stomach that's probably still there. And then that's when I decided, you know what? I'm going to do some development work for this NGO. So I ended up research and land reform and you know, it was, it was fun because I got to travel and I got to do research and I got to talk to farmers and to fishermen and to workers.

So that part was really fun, talking to people, learning how they lived. And so, I can see now that that that's the beginning of my interest in sociology. It wasn't because I was interested in sociology. It wasn't even because I wanted to be in academia. It was because I wanted to keep doing that kind of work. I wanted to keep studying the Philippines broadly, but really just talking to people, learning about how they lived and trying to understand that. 

You know, the final aspect of this is during my master's, my one year master's, a professor mentioned to me, kind of offhand, that I should consider graduate school. Honestly, I had never thought about it until then, until he brought it up. I had no real models to turn to, I just hadn't conceived of it until that professor suggested it. 

And I remember in Manila thinking, what am I going to do? I knew that I wanted to keep reading and learning and thinking about the Philippines, but also to do research that involved learning about how they lived, you know, up close. And so I thought, well, maybe there's another adventure. Maybe this can be a situation that can satisfy those things. It can give me enough money to live, and it can allow me to do what I really want to do. So, I applied to graduate school, but not just in sociology, I applied to graduate school in anything that would fit, you know, that would give me a license to keep studying the Philippines. 

So development studies, political science programs, sociology. It just so happened that I got into two sociology programs, one in Michigan, which is the one I went to, and one in Wisconsin. And I ended up going to the one in Michigan because they gave me money and the one in Wisconsin didn't. 

It’s quite serendipitous, you know, things just kind of happened. And sometimes I didn't really have much choice. The path just turned where it turned and I, you know, I'm kind of mortified now because I deal with a lot of undergrads and they're thinking 10 years, 20 years ahead. That's a good thing. You know, I'd want that for my kids, but so far from where I was, you know, that it's a bit shocking, how far ahead they're planning their life. But for me, these, you know, I knew what I wanted, that wasn't the issue. It's just that I didn't do much career planning.

Stephen12:51
Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I don't think you're the only person I've spoken to for this show, who had that experience I know what I'm interested in and then the field kind of, the field gets selected kind of based off of that. but I'm really curious how that felt.

Like, so, I mean, you know, I think the interest obviously was something that you felt very strongly. So what was it like to start and complete a PhD program in a field that you had not really been thinking that much about in your previous, you know, life. 

Marco Garrido 13:21
 That's a really good question, Stephen, because it was its own kind of adventure. First of all, it took me nine years to finish. Now, a lot happened during that time, you know, I got married, I had two kids, born in Ann Arbor, you know, and so I wasn't in a particular rush to leave, to be honest, plus my fieldwork took me abroad, several times, including OPEC, one full year of field work in Manila, including other years of language training. So, there was a lot in those nine years, but that's longer than the normal. PhD timeline. 

And I had to learn what sociology was, and at first it was disorienting because I was coming from a humanities English background, and sociology was very different.

I had to train myself. I had to discipline myself. And I remember specifically kind of thinking, well, okay, so this is a scientific enterprise. And I need to collect data. I can't make claims unless it's on the basis of this data. I need to be very careful. It's not like the humanities, where it encourages you to be more critical and to mobilize resources around the argument.

And so, I remember specifically thinking about the lab reports I do in biology class in high school. And thinking, I need to write these papers as if they were lab reports. I have to keep out all the other things that I want to put in, and just focus on, you know, a prose that's fair, that's functional, that's clear, and an analysis that's tightly bound to data, it's very conservative.

So I had to learn that, so it was hard. In fact, I would say that my learning how to be a sociologist extended beyond the PhD, even when I got a job starting out at the University of Chicago, I deliberately opted to teach the more introductory level classes because it allowed me to read things that I had never gotten a chance to read, to kind of supplement my education.

And I think for me, at least it turned out great because I got to go back to the classics. And really try to understand for myself what the essence of sociology was, what the fundamental insights were and how to pursue. And I think that tutelage that again, extended into my assistant professorship has really shaped me intellectually, shaped the cast of my scholarship has become foundational., the fact that I came from a different, you know, if I had a different major forced me to really pay attention to what sociology was and to be to make explicit what its main tenets were

Stephen16:05
Yeah, that's interesting. I wonder how many chairs and deans of undergraduate studies did not take courses in that topic as undergrads. That's gotta be in the minority. But can you tell me a little bit more about that position and, and like what it entails?

Cause I think our listeners will have a great sense of what a professor is, but probably a lot hazier idea of like what it means to be in charge of an undergraduate program.

Marco Garrido 16:30
 Sure. Okay. So I'm the director of undergraduate studies. We call it DUS. Different departments have their own DUSs. And so, as the DUS in sociology, I've been DUS now for about four plus years, four going on five years. I basically liaise between the department, the faculty, and the students themselves. 

So recently what we did is we overhauled the curriculum, and so I helped rethink what our requirements should be as a major in particular, a particularly important component of the major is the thesis, because that requires a major research project.

And so students often go for the money, and students often go off for the summer or during the year to do research on some kind of topic that they work out together with an advisor. And then, they spend the next year, the fourth year, writing a thesis and attending a seminar, which is essentially a thesis writing workshop.

So that's a pretty major component of the major. So I oversee all of that. I just make sure students know what their requirements are. I answer their questions. I hold town halls. I figure out the curriculum requirements. Recently we did hiring for an instructional professor. So all of that stuff. I suppose the best part is that in the process you get to really know the students. 

So there's the Chicago Journal of Sociology. I attended its reception. It's kind of nice to see it grow. I know the students by name. I see them a lot because I teach introductory classes. On the downside, it's a lot of admin and it's a lot of emails. It's not my favorite part of it. 

Stephen18:11
That on that point, you are very much in keeping with the rest of your colleagues. I can tell you. 

Marco Garrido 18:17
 Yeah. 

Stephen18:17
I'm curious what research you are interested in now, if you're able to do it. I mean, I know you have a lot of responsibilities, but are there projects that you still are finding time to work on or things that you are looking forward to working on when you get that time?

Marco Garrido 18:31
 Yes, I have time, and that's one of the big benefits of working at the University of Chicago that the teaching load, first of all, I really enjoy teaching, but you know, I enjoy it in moderation. You know, I like teaching, but I don't like to feel overloaded. So, thankfully, teaching at the University of Chicago, they're relatively short quarters.You know, we have to teach four classes, but spread out over three quarters. It's not so bad. 

Actually, I just came from a cumulative full year of field work. So this was the last, you know, the last time I did a big full year of research was in 2009, 2010. That was for my dissertation. And as I said, I was in Manila for that full year.

This time I was in Manila again, and I, but I had to break it up in two six month chunks. So I'd start in the summer. So I'd leave in May or June at the end of the spring quarter. I'd stay in Manila through the fall quarter and come back in December, so it amounted to about six months in 2022, six months in 2023.

And this project is on, broadly, democracy. But again, I'm interested in people's, you know, kind of democracy up close and personal, so people's experiences of democracy. And so my, you know, my research focuses on that site is really meant for Manila. But I like to talk to people from all across the class spectrum.

So over the past, you know, over that cumulative one year, I talked to people in middle class communities, gated communities, people, part of middle class organizations, but also lower middle class working class, really poor people in various kinds of settlements, informal settlements, recently formalized settlements.

It's fascinating to me because the rich and poor, broadly speaking, live side by side in a city like Manila, and that's the pattern throughout. You have these informal settlements or slum areas right next to gated communities. But politically, especially in the last 10, 20 years, we have very different preferences. 

And so, you know, the election I was interested in, the 2022 election, brought back a Marcos. It was the son of the ousted dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, in 1986, and his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., or Bongbong Marcos, was elected. And he was quite popular among the lower middle class and the working class and the poor, but quite reviled among the middle and upper classes.

I just find that interesting. And so, you know, I talk to people and it's not so much that I get a sense of their preferences. It's really I want to understand where they're coming from, you know, and I try to put their political views in the context of their lives, their communities, their social networks, these kinds of things.

So really what I'm getting at is not just a matter of why do you like this kind of policies, why are these your politics versus that. It's what kind of social worlds do you inhabit that lead you to think, see politics in this way, or prefer this person over the other? And that's really where the sociology comes in elaboration of the way they live, how they live, conditions in which they live, their experiences, and how that informs their political choices. So I did a lot of that, you know. 

Primarily I do interviews, but, you know, these are very open interviews that take a long time. And really, I'm just asking about people's lives and their communities, but it also means that I spent a lot of time in these different kinds of communities.

And so there'd be days where I would come from very poor communities and, you know, I would eat with the people I'm doing research on. And, you know, I remember one day where they offered me a meal with a lot of rice and then a kind of soup or broth poured over the rice with the broth had some fish, a little bit of fish, a lot of fins, a little bit of fish, poured over the rice, and then people would eat a lot of rice.

And then that evening, just so happened that, I was, I went to a very rich part of town, into a gated community, a twice, thrice gated community. And so you have to go past three checkpoints to get to this, to get to the person's house. I was invited by the family and, you know, there was several course meal with roasted pigs, seafood, full fish, squid, but very little rice.

I suppose I remember it because I was struck by how my lunch meal in the poor community had so much rice, but not much of, not much else. In the other example for dinner, there was almost no rice. And so I remember it because I, in the first meal I was looking for something to go with the rice, and the latter meal I wish there was rice to go with the roast pig. That just gives you a sense of, you know, the vast, the different kinds of worlds people live in and the vast distance between them,

Stephen23:33
Right. Even though they're practically on top of each other geographically. So much more that I would like to ask about. I feel like we've barely scratched the surface, but we're almost out of time. And this is a little bit of a weird question. I know because you, certainly did not set out to be a sociologist, but I'm curious if you, there's any advice that you would want to share with someone who is considering going down that route.

Marco Garrido 23:59
 Yeah, yeah, I guess, since you're asking me, I guess. You know, I can recognize now that I'm in a fortunate position because I was, there are things in the world that I was just interested in and that was easy for me, that came naturally to me. And for whatever reason, I pursued those interests above other things, above other considerations. 

You know, I, it's not necessarily, I don't say that say that to identify that as a virtue of any kind. It's just how I was. There were things in the world that interested me, and I pursued those interests. And then I'd like to think I found a job that allowed me to do that, to keep pursuing my interests, to ask questions that I'm interested in, and to follow them. For the most part, I mean, I still have to deal with paper, but for the most part, I can recognize that I'm fortunate in that regard. 

And so, to your question, rather than conceive of going into sociology or really any kind of field as a career, I begin with, you know, your kind of the natural connection to the world, how your interests that arise naturally that draw you to something in the world. I mean, those are really kinds of gifts, I think, because I can think of cases where people lack those kinds of connections, are not interested, or are disinterested, you know, they are adverse or indifference. 

And that feels like, you know, being deaf when music is wonderful, being blind when the world is full of visual treats. And so what I'm saying is, rather than think of sociology or these other fields as a career, you start with your relationship to the world, particularly your, your interest in it.

You know, you have a stake, you have an interest in it, and that's what you build around. I recognize that it's not always easy, that it can be complicated, it can be tricky. But, that seems to be a way to live authentically, I suppose, as best as you can. So that seems to be the proper order of things, as opposed to, these are the careers I want, how do I get to them, which I know that makes a lot of sense. But the problem is, you know, just like with my consulting example, when you started this interview, sometimes you think you want things and you realize you really don't. 

Why not start with the things that you're sure, you're sure are an expression of who you are and then build around those things. But again, I recognize that's easier said than done, but I just noticed among undergraduates and certainly I would have been the same. Others would have been the same. But sometimes that relation is reversed. People get these misconceptions that you start with a career and then the interest grows. But in fact, you know, we have different kinds of interests. You know, I happen to have, I love music, as you know, but no talent as a musician. But I'd like to think that love for music is a piece with an interest in, an interest in kind of people and the kind of research I do, 

I, on my best days, the research I do feels like an approximation of making music. I'd like to think or making art or writing poetry or something like that. I'd like to think of it that way, but there's an arc to it that's what I would seize upon. That's what I would hold onto. That's, if you ask me to give advice to an aspiring academic sociologist even, that's what I would urge them to identify and embrace, because that's the thing that won't betray, you know, you can build on. 

Stephen27:53
I think that's, that's fantastic advice. And it's funny, like, you know, I did, that's probably one of those things. I don't know if you would have been able to put it that way at age 20 or 22 or whatever, but like it certainly seems to have served you well. And brought you to a place that's fulfilling.

Marco Garrido 28:09
 No, you're right, Stephen. I don't know if I would have, I just felt, you know, looking back and again, you know, I realized sometimes looking back. You can fall into all kinds of traps or misremember. But looking back, you know, I was knew to, I knew there were things I did not want to do and things that I wanted to do.

And so those things, I allowed them to sweep me, to sweep me where they, where they were. 

Stephen28:34
Thank you, Professor Garrido, for your time today. And Course Takers, if you enjoyed today's interview, please check out the other ones. Leave us a comment, subscribe, follow, and share this episode with your friends and family. You can find out more about the University of Chicago through uchicago.edu, or the University's campus at Hong Kong through uchicago.hk. Stay tuned for more and thanks for listening.