Academic Sociology Research Articles

95 Years of Teaching High School Sociology

A neglected part of the history of teaching sociology is the history of teaching high school sociology. The American Sociological Association's centennial in 2005 affords sociologists an opportunity to reflect on the teaching of sociology–anywhere and everywhere that it happens. In the spirit of contributing to the history of teaching sociology in the United States, this paper outlines the roughly 95-year history of the teaching of high school sociology. I rely upon published course descriptions written by high school sociology teachers and empirical studies conducted by academic sociologists. They demonstrate that past high school sociology courses have focused primarily on examining social problems and current events, and on promoting citizenship education. This remains the case today. I offer several reasons why the courses have looked as they have over the past 95 years, and conclude with four predictions about the future of teaching high school sociology.

The Ghost of Patrick Geddes: Civics as Applied Sociology

In 1904 and 1905 Patrick Geddes (1905, 1906) read his famed, but today little-read, two-part paper, ‘Civics: as Applied Sociology’, to the first meetings of the British Sociological Society. Geddes is often thought of as a ‘pioneer of sociology’ (Mairet, 1957;Meller, 1990) and for some (egDevine, 1999: 296) as ‘a seminal influence on sociology’. However, little of substance has been written to critically assess Geddes's intellectual legacy as a sociologist. His work is largely forgotten by sociologists in Britain (Abrams, 1968;Halliday, 1968;Evans, 1986). Few have been prepared to follow Geddes's ambition to bridge the chasm between nature and culture, environment and society, geography, biology and sociology. His conception of ‘sociology’, oriented towards social action from a standpoint explicitly informed by evolutionary theory. A re-appraisal of the contemporary relevance of Geddes's thinking on civics as applied sociology has to venture into the knotted problem of evolutionary sociology. It also requires giving some cogency to Geddes's often fragmentary and inconsistent mode of address. Although part of a post-positivist, ‘larger modernism’ Geddes remained mired in nineteenth century evolutionary thought and fought shy of dealing with larger issues of social class or the breakthrough work of early twentieth century sociology of Simmel, Weber and Durkheim. His apolitical notion of ‘civics’ limits its relevance to academic sociology today.

The identity career of the graduate student: Professional socialization to academic sociology

The pathway through graduate school is challenging and difficult. Nearly everyone, at one point or another, confronts the existential question of whether they want to drop out or to continue. Several challenges emerge as key to graduate students’ success in progressing through their programs. p]The first is moving from the secure but sometimes suffocating structure of a core graduate cohort into the role of independent student. This requires navigating an individual pathway into areas of specialization and a mentor. Programs can do no more than make faculty and courses available; from there, students must make connections and decisions on their own. The second critical transition involves moving from absorbing to creating knowledge. Accomplishing this requires that students grasp the conceptual foundation of the perspective (the “sociological eye”), learn how to gather data, to master the challenge of moving from immersion in the specificity of their research to contribute to more abstract theory, and to understand the conventions through which they must present their scholarly work. Along the way there are myriad interpersonal challenges for them to negotiate. Allegiances that they forge are then relinquished to make way for new, more stage-relevant ones. Students often undergo radical changes in their values and consciousness as they progress through their programs. They are bonded into an equalitarian model of evaluation and support in their cohesive, early years in the cohort. But as they forge scholarly accomplishments and turn their eyes increasingly toward the discipline, they recognize that their democratic ideals must yield to the meritocratic reality of the profession.

Editor’s introduction: “Reflections on graduate training in sociology”

In this issue, we offer a set of reflections, grounded in personal experience, on the process of becoming a "working sociologist" in graduate school, with particular emphasis on informal and implicit norms, subtle cues, and unexamined practices. We hope that this will prove to be a valuable service to the discipline, and that the analyses here will stimulate a broader conversation among all those concerned with the contemporary state of professional education. Special thanks are due to Professors David Shulman and Ira Silver, whose earlier article on informal socialization in this journal provided the basis for this expanded discussion. They played a crucial organizational role by soliciting papers, by providing an initial response to authors, and by conveying my editorial concerns to contributors during the process of final revisions. Since David and Ira have already carried out my usual editorial task of providing an overview of the articles in the issue, I will offer a few thoughts and suggestions based on my own years of struggle as a graduate student. It occurs to me, first of all, that the experience of professional socialization, considered from the perspective of the student, might well be characterized as an "ordeal," in the older sense of a special type of testing that requires displays of skill and courage in the face of danger. Even though the relatively protected environment of universities does not involve the threats to life and limb that accompany ordeals in military settings and warrior cultures, still there is a great deal at risk, especially the very "selves" of the aspiring sociologists, most of whom have long cherished a self-image as "among the better students" of their generation, and have been seen by families and friends as possessing special talents in teaching and scholarship. Within the new setting of graduate school, however, such presumed talents must be "proven" in the face of competition, and subjected to the evaluative gaze of established practitioners of academic sociology. There is no guarantee of success, and, indeed, novices quickly learn horror stories about the failures of others in their position. I myself recall rather vividly an experience many years ago, when as an M.A. student in sociology at St. Louis University I stopped by the department to inquire about the results of a doctoral comprehensive exam taken by a classmate. To my shock and consternation, I was informed that my friend John had not shown up for the exam, but had simply left town, never to be seen again.

Studying ourselves: Sociology discipline-building in the United States

self-studies, internal evaluations, and in the various histories of the discipline and of its professional organizations. In the early years of discipline-building, those who were, or wanted to be, sociologists studied themselves prodigiously and attempted to chart a course for posterity Prompted by the centennial anniversary of the American Sociological As sociation in 2005, it is timely to look back at how we defined and studied ourselves and at what was said as well as what was left unsaid. The "fathers" of American sociology and their network of associates engaged in dis cipline-building as they studied and directed the progress of the new science of sociol ogy. They collected data, analyzed it, reported their findings at professional meetings, and published them in the prominent journals of the day Of particular interest is who documented the history of early American sociology, how, and why? Peter Baehr di chotomized contributions to the development of sociology as either discursive or institu tional. Discursive contributions are those of ideas, and institutional those establishing "some artifact or institution demonstrably related to the sociological enterprise" (2002: 6). This work deals with the latter, specifically with sociology in institutions of higher education in the United States as it was introduced, defined, measured, and publicly presented. As is evident in the literature, the early history of academic sociology was written by white males and focused on selected male and coeducational institutions. In addition to looking at that history as a sociology of sociology, we will also seek out and examine the treatment of the "special mission" institutions for women and for blacks

Sociological Practitioners Contributing to New Product Development: Mapping the Challenges

To continue making profit in industry, companies use extensive research in the development of new products. This complex interdisciplinary process includes some social scientists. By using a SWOT framework as an analytical tool, this paper seeks to summarize the reflections as retrieved from the corpus of scientific publications in which the authors present themselves as sociologists or ethnographers, or as designers or marketers working with sociologists, sociology or ethnography while doing market, consumer, and usability research. This map can be a first step to determine how sociological practitioners can take advantage of the opportunities (e.g. concurrent engineering) in the product-development process through employing their strengths (e.g. context sensitivity), while averting threats (e.g. time pressure) by means of avoiding, correcting or compensating for their weaknesses (e.g. socialization in doing academic sociology).

Caroline Bartlett Crane and Municipalsanitation: Applied Sociology in the Progressive Era

Applied Sociology occupies contested territory between academic sociology and social activism. An examination of applied sociology at the turn of the 20th century, as practiced by Caroline Bartlett Crane, Unitarian minister and Progressive Era social reformer, provides an excellent case study of these disciplinary debates. This article examines Crane's efforts to utilize the new discipline of sociology to improve society through municipal sanitation. Sociology and community social reform were often closely linked in the Progressive Era. Early reformers and applied sociologists involved in sociology at the turn of the 20th century would likely be puzzled by the academic focus of the field today and dismayed by the privileged position of scholarship over social reform in contemporary sociology. One can only question how sociology's mission and message might differ today if the legacy of early, community-based sociology was more widely known within the discipline.

“Apathetic, active, or antagonistic”: A history of the American Sociological Association’s involvement in high school sociology

The role that the American Sociological Association (ASA) has historically played in reforming high school sociology courses has been alternately apathetic, active, or antagonistic. Apathy marked the time period between 1905 and about 1960, and again during most of the 1970s and 1980s. The Association played a much more active role during the New Social Studies movement of the 1960s, and has also been actively involved since the late 1980s. But even in its activity, the ASA has been antagonistic toward high school courses and teachers. During the 1960s, and again since about 1989, the ASA has pushed solely for the teaching of sociology as a scientific discipline. This approach has proven problematic for two reasons. First, it directly contradicts the traditional objective of the social studies curriculum—citizenship education. Teachers are much more concerned about molding good citizens than exposing students to the nuances of scientific inquiry. Second, it ignores the well-documented fact that high school sociology teachers typically have little training in, exposure to, or experience with formal, academic sociology. For that reason, they have had great difficulty satisfying the demands made by academic reformers. I conclude that the ASA must address these two issues and several others if it is serious about improving secondary sociology courses.

The business of becoming a professional sociologist: Unpacking the informal training of graduate school

While one can be labeled a sociologist in name by fulfilling formal institutional requirements, that is only part of the necessary work involved in graduate training. What is also required is mastering the informal professional culture associated with academic sociology. In this paper, we offer practical advice about informal norms in graduate school—norms we know now that we wish we’d known then. Our reflections upon our own experiences in graduate school are guided by our common research and teaching interests in informal organizational culture. What is the potential salience of informal norms, such as particularistic relations with faculty and graduate students, ceremonial versus actual practices regarding research and teaching, and emotional labor around one’s work, for better understanding the professional socialization of graduate study in sociology? Our emphasis here is to offer advice on how to navigate the graduate school realities these norms present. We also believe that sociologists should turn a more focused eye on the profession, one in which the presence of such norms is readily acknowledged and more formally considered for the benefit of teaching graduate students.

Phenomenological Ethnography in Sociology and Anthropology

In this issue we present a variety of examples of recent and ongoing ethnographic research in which investigators are working self-consciously in dialogue with one or more traditions within the phenomenological movement in philosophy. Each article makes a contribution to a given substantive field. As a set they pose a range of issues: the variety and distinctiveness of phenomenologically influenced ethnography, the relationship between philosophy and empirical inquiry, the evolution of phenomenological influences in social research, and issues about convergence and segregation in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology. We comment briefly on the last. One historically emergent difference is the contrasting moral postures that author and reader take toward the subjects of study. Anthropological writings characteristically have illuminated native groundings for subjects’ perspectives, enhancing respect for local cultures by uncovering reasons that outsiders had not appreciated. Sociological ethnography began in a similar posture, but for over 40 years now, and especially in phenomenologically influenced works, ethnographies produced out of academic sociology departments have frequently been critical or at least agnostic about claims made by their subjects, and the suspension of belief has ranged from the political to the ontological. The anthropological articles in this issue restore credibility to native graphy

Sociology and mass culture: Durkheim, Mills, and Baudrillard

In this concise and engaging work, Patricia Cormack investigates the broad cultural significance and relevance of academic sociology by examining its on-going relationship with modernity and mass culture. She bids us, rather than deny sociology's participation in culture, to see the discipline as informing ethical, epistemological and pedagogical questions. Through an examination of the writings of Emile Durkheim, C. Wright Mills and Jean Baudrillard, Cormack illustrates how their formulations of sociology as a cultural practice is rooted in the very mass culture that it studies. Central to the argument is a discussion of conceptual and rhetorical devices - .totems. and .tropes. - within social theory. In agreement with the three theorist subjects, Cormack posits that the social is a discursive artifact, becoming over time a .social fact., explaining and sustaining ordinary life. Durkheim treats the 19th century birth of sociology (in which he played a large part), as an intrinsic aspect of modern cultural consciousness. Mills advances this view further, treating the .Sociological Imagination. as part of and informing, mass culture. Baudrillard treats sociological reason as now equivalent to and inextricable from commonsense understandings of the culture it seeks to understand - rendering the sociological project essentially mute. Of value to social scientists, and theorists in particular, this is a specialized volume - a sociology of sociology - written at senior undergraduate or graduate level. It is intended as textually oriented ethnography, and thus presents a theoretical rather than empirical investigation of the relationship between sociology and culture.

Bookkeeping, accounting, calculative practice: the sociological suspense of calculation

Abstract While accounting has recently been very interested in sociology, sociology has, since Weber, largely neglected accounting. This paper reviews the sociology of accounting and calculative practice that has been established outside academic sociology by accounting scholars. Subsequently touring the historical settings of accounting practice, the Foucauldian perspective within the accounting discourse, and a shortlist of issues for further sociological research, it gradually broadens the perspective from bookkeeping to accounting, to calculative practice in general. The problem of economic governance is found to be central in translating questions of calculative practice into questions of social order. Calculative practices contribute to the maintenance of social order while associating the financial with the non-financial, the real with the hyperreal, the conventional with the creative, indicating considerable tensions inherent in the social fabric of calculating cultures, and upholding a suspense of calculation inspiring further sociological investigation.

The Voice and the Listener: Feminist Theory and the Sociological Canon

This paper discusses the relationship between feminist theory and the contemporaneous efforts to re-think basic sociological categories occurring in the aftermath of the 1960s' social movements, primarily in the US and Europe. I examine the questions that were being asked by both feminist thinkers and several major sociological theorists (Richard Sennett, Alain Touraine and Anthony Giddens). I attempt to evaluate the extent to which the latter were initially, and in later work, willing or interested in hearing and incorporating feminist voices in their re-thinking of the field. I identify a tendency to circumscribe feminist contributions to particular substantive areas - those related specifically to gender, or to sexuality, subjectivity and personal life - with, as Susan Bordo has pointed out, much less receptivity to feminist theorists' contributions to more general "cultural critique" and issues which are considered to be "macro-level". I also engage in a brief discussion of how these problems have been reproduced in Brazilian social sciences and the uneasy relationship between feminist scholarship and academic sociology in Brazil today.

The Lesson to Be Learned: The past Troubles and Future Promise of Teaching High School Sociology

High school sociology has historically been and largely continues to be neglected by the discipline's professional organizations and by academic sociologists. The few past reforms of high school sociology-such as the SRSS project during the 1960s and early 1970s-were aimed at course content and instructional materials; they have failed. I argue that a new approach is necessary, one that focuses on improving high school sociology teacher training. Professional associations and academic departments must both contribute to efforts to improve the formal sociological education and professionalization of high school teachers of the discipline. Improving teacher training is the best way to enhance the quality of secondary sociology courses, and may also help rectify the discipline's distorted public image as high school students gain a more accurate appreciation and understanding of fundamental sociological insights from their better trained teachers

From Republic of Scholars to Jamboree of Academic Sociologists

In this article six crucial historical phases of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS) are sketched out: (1) 1909-19, the end of the German Kaiserreich, the foundation phase of the DGS; (2) 1919-33, the Weimar Republic, the phase of academic institutionalization of German sociology; (3) 1933-45, during which National Socialism dominated the German academic system; (4) 1946-68, the postwar period during which different academic systems were established in the two German states; (5) 1968-89, when sociology in West Germany had its greatest quantitative expansion, while in East Germany Soziologie was slowly re-emerging; (6) the period since reunification, with the expansion of a West German conception of sociology to East German universities.

Quebec Sociology: A Discipline and its Object

Quebec sociology and Quebec society are categorically distinct from other sociologies and countries. Both are “communities,” both have French-speaking majorities, and both exist in Anglo-Saxon environments. As well, Quebec sociology has always been and continues to be obsessed by the national question. Interpretations proposed by sociologists—predominantly French-speaking—of and about the Quebec Question have never been independent of the struggles in which they have taken place. In fact, sociological readings of nationalism in Quebec appear to be a direct consequence of their social position and relationship with political power. Through the prism of sociology, the French-speaking collectivity in Canada has been, successively and simultaneously, characterized through categories of race, ethnic group, society, and nation. 2 This article presents five ways in which sociologists have represented Quebec society. First, the Pioneers: Leon Gerin and Marius Barbeau, or the Quebec “Difference” as a handicap. Second, the characterization of Quebec through race, territory, and soul. Third provides the external perspectives of Miner and Hughes. Fourth will examine the Laval (Quebec) School. Finally, this article will examine Quebec Society as either an ethnic or civic nation. Each theme has been set chronologically in specific periods of Quebec sociology: the Pioneers (Part 1 and 2, before 1940); the institutionalization of academic sociology (Part 3 and 4, 1940-1969); and the “nationalization” and professionalization of sociology (Part 5, 1970 to the present).

Den blinda fläcken

The Blind Spot: Mind, Body or Matter?Using Nick Crossley’s recently published The Social Body. Habit, identity and desire as a starting-point the author questions certain contemporary attempts to overcome dualism (often connected with present-day sociological interest in the body). He argues that they, if committed to materialism, crude or sophisticated, will reproduce dualism. They will end in materialist reductionism, he argues,unless ”knowing” or ”mind”, a no-thing-ness, is recognized as inalienable to reality. This does not, as often assumed, imply ”solipsism” unless one accepts the very dualist presupposition that mind is some-thing ”private”, ”inside” of basically separate selves. Introducing non-dualist traditions outside of the body of academic sociology he presents certain practical forms of inquiry. Directed at or including the very inquirer they do not approach the mind/body-issue as a purely ”theoretical” issue. Mind/body-dualism is further seen as an aspect of the broader dualism of self/other, in its turn the basis for human suffering and unfreedom. He asks at last why sociology, given a certain disciplinary self-understanding, bothers about dualism. He proposes the reason it does might be an unrecognised, academically indecent ”existential” search for ”wholeness” . This “existential” aspect need be accepted, for the “problem of dualism ” to find a solution.

The Use and “Abuse” of Family in Policy Matters

Family as an institution and as rhetoric appears to play an inordinate role in shaping social policy formation, implementation, and evaluation. Its impact affects the work of applied and academic sociologists in multiple ways. Given its importance and the manner in which it operates, I argue that family may be usefully studied as an ideograph. I present a detailed analysis of how family operates rhetorically to shape and constrain policy-related matters. I also illustrate how it affects and delimits consideration of some specific social concerns, and I conclude that social science practitioners should conscientiously take family into account as we do our own work.

Critical Anthropology Now: Unexpected Contexts, Shifting Constituencies, Changing Agendas (review)

Critical Anthropology Now: Unexpected Contexts, Shifting Constituencies, Changing Agendas. GEORGE E. MARCUS, ed. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1999; 440 pp. In the 1980s a spate of self-reflexive and critical scholarship identified a of in anthropology that was linked, albeit in different ways, by this scholarship to the postmodern conditions of anthropological practice and the postcolonial dilemmas of cultural studies. Writing Culture [James Clifford and George Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986] was a compelling and widely read contribution to the debates that ensued. In the 1990s anthropologists sought diverse ways out of this crisis (some, of course, hotly disputed the validity of the notion of crisis itself) and several stimulating works resulted. The anthropological field site was redefined. Anthropological theory was renewed through intense engagements with domains of inter-disciplinary theoretical production in literary studies, feminist studies, environmental studies, development studies, ethnic studies, religious studies, as well as anthropology's more conventional disciplinary interlocutors in geography, political science, linguistics, and philosophy. Critical Anthropology Now is a product of this new robustness in the discipline that causes some observers from outside the field to marvel at Anthropology's appetite for new ideas and new research venues. As George Marcus writes in the introduction to this fine volume, the authors assembled in this collection, simply want to demonstrate that the impact of the socalled postmodernist critiques of anthropology lies not in further discussions of postmodernism, but in the enactments of new kinds of research projects in anthropology, differently problematized and innovatively conducted (p. With this admirable goal the volume gathers together a series of studies, not all by anthropologists, that examine major social issues in America and try to be transparent about their methodological creativity. The introduction suggests the notion of the machine-to remind the reader that ethnography participates in an existing and contestatory world of representation as one mode among many. Several essays illuminate the pertinence of this concept to the conditions in which anthropological research and writing is conducted these days. Judith Stacey does this work by examining the trajectory of writing in family sociology. She argues that postmodernity as a sociological condition created new kinds of families in America. She goes on to examine why and how academic sociology allied with political organizations of varied ideological persuasions to keep debates centered on issues of family values cast in terms of the nuclear family. Stacey's conclusions that power/knowledge shifts have determined the content of family sociology more than disinterested research have, however, to be taken on faith as other possible explanations for these trends are not discussed. Sherry Ortner presents another tantalizing slice from her on-going research on class and culture in America. She makes the important point that journalism and anthropology constitute data for each other in a mutual competition to unveil the truth about American culture. This elegant and thoughtful essay nicely exemplifies many of the challenges and opportunities of doing research on middle class culture. Starting with her high school classmates in New Jersey, Ortner travels to different parts of America, where these former classmates and their children have dispersed, to learn how late capitalism embeds itself in social structure and creates similar generation-specific anxieties across significant class differences. The article concludes with a plug for the merits of long-term ethnographic fieldwork that is strangely at odds with a volume where such field work is not much in evidence and where its possibility in any bounded, discrete, sense of knowledge production has been seriously questioned. …

Subalterns of technopoly: brokering techno‐power in academic sociology

Drawing on responses to a small-scale sensitizing sociological probe of 'technological stratification' in academic sociology, this article considers the role of academic staff delegated to oversee the distribution of information and communications technology resources within their departments between the years 1987-1996. From their recollections as local 'gatekeepers' of the new knowledge technologies, these 'subalterns of Technopoly' perceived themselves as relatively powerless 'techno-power brokers' unable to make a significant difference to the 'technological stratification' they encountered in their working environments in that period.