Peter Daniel Miller
Entering Cohort: 1967
Visual Artist,Kamakura, Japan
Website: www.kamprint.com
After graduating from Columbia College in 1967, I entered the Berkeley Sociology Department under a Ford Foundation Fellowship. In my first year there, I was attracted to the work of Erving Goffman and Nathan Glazer. Erving Goffman, perhaps best known as the author of 'The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,' was one of the most articulate lecturers I have ever heard. His ability to communicate complex ideas in plain English was a welcome relief from the jargon-ridden prose of many sociologists. And his sociology of everyday encounters and exploration of what we mean by common sense and shared understandings was a revelation of the richness of ordinary life. Nathan Glazer, in the very different field of public policy, offered an equally down-to-earth and common-sense approach to advancing understanding. I found a congenial atmosphere at the Center for the Study of Law and Society, where Philip Selznick and Sheldon Messinger assembled a fine inter-disciplinary group of scholars from law, political science, sociology, criminal justice, and other fields. Sheldon Messinger's death earlier this year was profoundly saddening.
My early years at Berkeley (1967 - 1969) coincided with the Vietnam War, which I opposed and in which I refused to serve. Students' occupation of 'People's Park' provoked University lawyers to advise violent confrontation with them, leading to riots and several days of helicopter-based tear-gassing of the campus. As a teaching assistant, I taught several classes at home when the atmposphere of the campus became too noxious. I volunteered for alternative service in 1969 and worked at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic and the San Francisco Health Department, first as a statistical clerk tabulating punch cards, then in the Environmental Health area. The latter was a fancy term for the bureau that supervised garbage collection, which was performed by the Sunset Scavenger Company. I received complaints from the public about garbage service and about various real or imagined threats to public health arising therefrom. These ranged from neighbors tossing garbage into one anothers' yards to interpretations of the rules for placement of garbage cans, to citizens claiming they were being gassed by unseen enemies. One organizational innovation that I am particularly proud of is the invention of a hearing procedure designed to listen to the complaints of aggrieved citizens. This enabled them to be heard with more gravitas than they would otherwise have been accorded.
Just days after completing my alternative service, while walking on the sidewalk on Bancroft Way, I was struck by a Buick driven by a well-known Berkeley heroin dealer. My leg was shattered and would have been lost save for the fine work done by surgeons at Cowell Hospital. There have since been a series of surgeries, and it is only last year that I have been able to walk normally. Nevertheless I completed the Ph D at Berkeley, served on the Board of the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation, and wrote a dissertation on the gatekeeping functions of legal doctrine in the context of cases driven by social advocacy. The horrible injury I suffered, combined with other excesses of the time, inevitably influenced my political and social views, which over time evolved into a rejection of the prevailing ideologies. Already in the 1970s, incipient political correctness in the leading sociology departments made it clear to me that my parents had endowed me with the wrong skin color (white) and gender (male) for an academic career. Accordingly I embarked on a research and consulting path with Stanford Research Institute.
There I found that sociology was much in demand as a source of insight and knowledge that was novel from the perspective of governmental and private clients. The National Science Foundation, the EPA, the Department of Energy all wanted to know the social impact of their policies. Economic agencies, dissatisfied with traditional economic indicators, sought social indicators of success. Companies wanted to know what consumers were thinking, what values they should be pursuing or representing, how to address new markets, what the future held. I was not at all convinced that 'social science' had the tools necessary to satisfy these demands. But those with more confidence and perhaps less methodological scruple led the way, and the consulting business grew. I traipsed through the coal country of Wyoming and West Virginia in search of 'Energy Independence' for America, and helped the Brits, the Scots, the Canadians, the Kuwaitis, and the Arkansans with economic development. Who would have thought sociology was good for so many things?
Eventually Honda Motor Company sought advice on where to locate their first American factory. By chance this inquiry came to me, I wrote a proposal, was interviewed for the project by a Honda executive, and was awarded the contract within two weeks. I looked at numerous sites in the Midwest and recommended Columbus Ohio on the basis of a carefully constructed set of indicators. On my first visit to Japan I fell in love with the place and with my wife-to-be. We married, lived in California for a while, then relocated ourselves to Tokyo. There I started a consulting group for the Bank of America, helping companies in the semiconductor and telecommunications industries set up operations in Japan. While Japan was (and is) radically different from America, I found the transition to be manageable. I think my education in sociology was excellent preparation for integrating social change into everyday experience, and for putting observations of experience to practical use. Unlike those who made themselves miserable by trying to force everything into a mono-cultural mold, I found -- and still find -- the change refreshing and interesting.
My current occupation is artist/printmaker. I am the founder and proprietor of The Kamakura Print Collection (www.kamprint.com), a workshop dedicated to photogravure etching, printmaking, and publishing. The technique, developed in England and France in the 1830s, produces a unique range of tonality from the variable depth of etch and variety of inks and papers available. The original prints are in many museum and private collections, and may be seen (and purchased) at Japonesque in San Francisco, and at the other galleries and dealers listed at my website. The prints may also be ordered from me. (End of commercial.) My research interests these days involve the composition of inks used in 17th-century European workshops, and I am starting to mix some of these myself as an alternative to those that are commercially available.
Dissertation: Social Advocacy and the Legal Process