Training In Sociology Research Articles

Dyke Methods: A Meditation on Queer Studies and the Gay Men Who Hate It

In the late 2000s, when I was writing Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men (2015), mainstream LGBT political discourse was dominated hy aspirations for legal rights and hioevolutionary legitimacy (Duggan 2004; Spade 2015). The political future of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people seemed to hinge on the biological origins of desire, and considerable excitement was built around research projects that could provide evidence of these origins (Whisman 1995; Jordan-Young 2011; Walters 2014). Queer and feminist scholars were experiencing pressure to redefine interdisciplinarity as a partnership with neuroscientists and others who might deepen our understanding of the hormonal and genetic causes of same-sex desire-as if same-sex were a transparent concept. It seemed as if no one was paying attention to sociologist Vera Whisman, who, in her prescient 1995 hook Queer by Choice, made the compelling case that horn this way arguments typically serve gay men-politically and culturally-in ways that they do not serve queer women. And if people were thinking about the gendered implications of the sociohiology of sexual orientation, they were listening to evolutionary psychologists like Lisa Diamond, who explained women's sexual fluidity as a congenital condition, an evolutionary adaptation (2008).It was in this context that I wrote Not Gay, a hook about sex practices that, to my mind, begged for attention to the constraints of sociohiological accounts. Several sociologists have conducted empirical studies of sexual contact between straight-identified men (Anderson 2008; Anderson 2010; Reynolds 2015; Carrillo and Hoffman 2016; Silva, forthcoming). There was no urgent need for more empirical research on this subject. What had not yet been examined, however, were the cultural narratives circulating around straight white men's homosexual encounters and the rhetorical and material conditions that allowed white men's sex practices to circumvent the pathologizing gaze applied to men of color on the down low (Snorton 2014). Drawing on an eclectic archive of cultural materials and the tools of cultural studies, Not Gay investigated the stories people tell about why and how straight white men might behave homosexually. I drew on a broad theoretical and methodological repertoire-a synthesis of queer studies, cultural studies, sociology, and feminist theory. I wrote in a feminist tradition invested in exposing the myth of scientific objectivity by locating myself, and my utopian feminist longings, within the story of the research (Reinharz 1992). I followed the lead of critical race ethnographers by simultaneously studying up, down, and sideways as a white feminist dyke asserting her right to make claims about the meaning of homosexual contact between straight white men (Twine and Warren 2000). The entire hook was infused with the queer impulse to forget my disciplinary training (in sociology), to draw on lowbrow and eclectic archives that make new ways of thinking possible, and to see what desire, humor, and rage might yield if allowed to run through my writing, unleashed and directed at straight white men (see Halherstam 2011).I watched many hours of porn. I spent months trying to acquire the rights to reprint original photos of male sailors eating garbage out of each others anuses during a navy initiation ceremony. I wrote in cabins in the woods where I laughed and cried at my own excited response to the opportunity to subject straight white men's sexual encounters to a queer, feminist analysis. The hook was both a feminist fuck you to the persistent normalization and idealization of straight white men's bodies and sex practices, and an unexpected chamber in which my empathy for straight white men deepened.Not Gay was read hy far more people than I ever anticipated. Due to some savvy marketing on the part of NYU Press and the apparent salaciousness of the subject matter, the hook received an unusual amount of media attention, with coverage hy New York magazine, Forbes, Cosmopolitan, the Guardian, Newsweek, the Huffington Post, Vice, and Salon, and a number of reporters in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. …

Mann, the United States, and the World

Mann, the United States, and the World Andrew Preston (bio) Michael Mann. The Sources of Social Power, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986–2012: Vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. 1986. 578pp. $109.99 (cloth); 2nd ed. 2012. $39.99 (paper). Vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914. 2012. 846pp. $119.99 (cloth); $39.99 (paper). Vol. 3: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890–1945. 2012. 516pp. $109.99 (cloth); $39.99 (paper). Vol. 4 : Globalizations, 1945–2011. 2012. 496 pp. $104.99 (cloth); $34.99 (paper). Michael Mann, a sociologist of class and nation-states in modern Europe, has written a monumental four-volume account of global history that every historian of the United States should read. The first volume of The Sources of Social Power, which examines world history up to the middle of the eighteenth century, was published in 1986; volume two, which covers the period between 1760 and 1914 and provides the keystone for the four-volume set (and, analytically, is the jewel in the crown), appeared in 1993. Mann then took a hiatus of sorts, at least from his magnum opus, and did not produce the third and fourth volumes until 2012. He kept himself busy between the publication of volumes two and three, however, by writing insightful books about U.S. foreign policy, fascism, and ethnic cleansing.1 Mann has had an eclectic career, in disciplinary terms part historical and part sociological, and his eclecticism is reflected in The Sources of Social Power. He has focused on various aspects of culture, ideology, religion, economics, governance, and political thought in a wide variety of social and national contexts. He has an undergraduate degree in history and a doctorate in sociology, both from Oxford; yet despite this Oxonian pedigree, his own [End Page 401] social background was modest. After his doctorate, Mann taught in some of the leading sociology departments in Britain, first at the University of Essex and, then, the London School of Economics. In 1986—the same year the first volume of The Sources of Social Power appeared—he moved to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has remained ever since. Mann’s life experience, then, has been in various social and national settings, but his worldview is fundamentally rooted in the ideas of British social democracy and labor politics, and to a lesser extent, American liberalism.2 The four volumes of this work reflect Mann’s diversity of training and interests. They exhibit a high degree of sociological theory yet are readable to historians with no formal training in sociology. They are global histories that are nonetheless rewarding to historians grounded in a particular national or regional context, such as the United States. Mann is able to achieve this accessibility first and foremost through a breathtakingly wide comparative dimension, which enables him to draw out the relevant and revealing similarities and differences of empires and states. Mann’s typologies of power are thorough and at times convoluted, but they are for the most part digestible and eminently sensible, and he does the reader a great service by reiterating them in the introduction to each volume. It is best to think of Mann’s schema for various types of power as having two levels. On the first and grandest level, he identifies four main types of power—ideological, economic, military, and political (IEMP)—that have been present throughout history, from the ancient world to the present. The second level consists of three subordinate modalities of power, each of them dichotomous: distributive and collective power, which distinguishes between consensus and coercion; authoritative and diffuse power, which distinguishes between the source of power and whether it emanates from a specific locale or is systemic and undirected; and, finally, extensive and intensive power, which distinguishes between the projection of power outwards from the state and the mobilization of power within. These categories will be familiar to sociologists, but in a work of such historical range and scale, Mann’s exegesis of various forms of power and how they are exercised and deployed is in itself a valuable contribution for historians, who tend not to...

The Impact of Sociology in My Role as an Evaluator

The skills gained from an education in sociology make for those of a great evaluator. This article describes how my theoretical and methodological training in sociology has impacted my current position in evaluation at a large research-focused university. In addition to the importance of quality training, I also discuss how universities and agencies can work together to create successful partnerships for program evaluations. My position as an evaluator in the university, however, is not without its challenges. I discuss my views on how evaluators are viewed by other academics and why I remain dedicated to being both a sociologist and an evaluator.

Biomarker Testing for Suspected Autism Spectrum Disorder in Early Childhood: Is Such Testing Now Feasible?

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a genetic malady comprising a cluster of pervasive developmental brain dysfunctions resulting in social, language, cognition and speech deficits. ASD is difficult to diagnose in the neonate where dis tinct anatomical defects are not apparent other than head size and intraocular distance. Hence, clinical diagnoses are delayed to later in childhood (2–4 years), a time when nerve networking and patterning are already being established. Such infants will be deprived of presently available clinical interventions such as neurological examinations, speech, language and trainings, cognitive evaluations and sociological training interactions involving behavior modification. Presently, there are no ASD early childhood testing programs in place despite accounting analyses revealing lifetime costs of US$3.5 million per capita. Since abnormal serum levels of brain neuropeptides have now been linked to ASD in the biomedical literature, is it now feasible to implement pilot studies of early childhood testing for ASD? ASD is a severely disabling inherited condi

In Memoriam: Deborah Barreau

Professor Deborah Barreau influenced countless individuals as a teacher, mentor, and colleague. She did so through her inherent belief that there is good in everyone and her willingness to act on that belief and devote time and energy to others. She truly cared about people, and many of the accolades she has received reflect this. In addition to being a gentle and caring human being, Deborah was also an influential scholar who made important contributions to the information field. She combined her training in sociology, organizational behavior, and information science to craft a research agenda that put people at the center of information systems. Her dissertation work introduced the importance of ephemeral information in the workplace and the roles that such ephemeralness (e.g., sticky notes on the desktop monitor) played in illustrating workarounds that people use to deal with monolithic or poorly designed systems. One of her early projects investigated how people organize their computer desktops and a resulting paper (Barreau, D. & Nardi, B. 1995. Finding and reminding: file organization from the desktop, CHI Bulletin, 27(3)) is often cited in studies of what has come to be known as personal information management (PIM). Over the years, Deborah continued to study the human and organizational factors that affect complex systems such as libraries and corporate offices, and more basic systems such as personal collections. She was one of the organizers of a series of PIM workshops that have taken place at SIGCHI, SIGIR, ASIST, and CSCW conferences over the past several years. She co-edited important publications that have driven the field forward (e.g., the special issue of ACM Transactions on Information Systems in 2008).

Promoting Athletic Training Through a General Education Course in Psychosocial Aspects of Sports Injuries

Context: A general education course taught by athletic training education faculty has the potential to expose the entire student body to the athletic training profession in a unique way while also meeting requirements of the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education. Objective: To introduce a detailed case study of a general education course taught by athletic training education faculty. Background: The general education curriculum is designed to enable students to appreciate and understand numerous disciplines. As a helping profession, athletic trainers are skilled at addressing a myriad of issues as they relate to an active individual's physical, psychological, and social well-being. Athletic training educators are ideal individuals to develop and teach courses demonstrating the interrelationships among psychology, sociology, and athletic training. Description: Detailed course topics and relevant supporting literature for the course are presented. Examples of techniques used in the course are provided to aid athletic training educators in the development of their own course. The challenges and rewards of offering a general education course are also outlined. Advantages: This course can expose the general student population to athletic training by fostering, introducing, and increasing collaboration among faculty, nontraditional teaching methods, and department/program productivity. Conclusion: A general education course developed and taught by athletic training education programs has both institutional and curricular value. Athletic training educators have knowledge and expertise with respect to musculoskeletal injury care and a unique understanding of a physically active individual's mindset following injury. These distinctive traits can help the entire student body understand and apply concepts of this course to their everyday lives.

America’s Experts: Race and the Fictions of Sociology (review)

Reviewed by: America’s Experts: Race and the Fictions of Sociology Robert Butler Cynthia H. Tolentino. America’s Experts: Race and the Fictions of Sociology. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2009. 125 pp. $22.50. This carefully researched, compact study examines how three writers, Richard Wright, Carlos Bulosan, and Jade Snow Wong, were strongly influenced by modern sociological research and theory but needed, finally, to challenge and transcend them in order to articulate fully their own unique visions of American racial and ethnic life. Central to Tolentino’s book are the following propositions: 1) Sociology in the twentieth century was the dominant knowledge producer about race and ethnicity, becoming the “official national discourse” (25) on these matters; 2) “Canonical Sociology,” formed by the Chicago School at the turn of the century and further developed by influential sociologists such as Gunnar Myrdal and Emory Bogardus during the Cold War, helped to shape and advance American foreign policy in Europe, Asia, and Africa; and 3) creative artists such as Wright, Bulosan, and Wong had to break away from sociological knowledge and methods, finding them excessively abstract and simplistic. Her chapter on Wright is the strongest part of the book, because her thesis squares best with his actual literary practice, especially in his masterwork, Native Son. She grants that Wright was deeply influenced by sociologists such as Robert Park, Horace Cayton, and St. Clair Drake, arguing that they provided him with a clear, coherent means of understanding his traumatic experiences in both the rural South and the urban North. She also effectively links Wright’s interest in sociology to his equally strong attraction to Communism, since both enabled him to engage in an organized search for truth and imagine systematic ways to reengineer social and political reality. Tolentino quite rightly points out, as many others have also done, that Wright felt constrained, both as a person and as an artist, by the limits of sociological theory and Marxist dogma, finding them at odds with his own vision of African American life. As he stressed in both “I Tried to Be a Communist” and “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born,” he was wary of any abstract approaches to human experience which could prevent him from truthfully examining the full richness, complexity, and density of black life. [End Page 534] He became what Paul Gilroy characterized as “a new kind of black author” (5) who, in Tolentino’s words, practiced “an independent and black radicalism” (12). This view of Wright is supported by a detailed and nuanced reading of Native Son. The remainder of Tolentino’s study places two autobiographical narratives, Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart and Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter in the context of the cultural and political milieu of the Cold War. She argues convincingly that American foreign policy shaped by the State Department made elaborate attempts to use the work of professional artists to strengthen our image in Europe, Asia, and the Third World as a means of furthering U. S. interests as a global power intent on achieving hegemony in those regions. (This policy advanced the careers of writers whose works could serve as evidence of American racial reform and progress, while repressing the careers of those like Paul Robeson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Richard Wright, who were viewed by the State Department as dangerous subversives and a threat to our image abroad.) Tolentino views Bulosan and Wong as strongly influenced by post-World War II sociology that held an emphatically assimilationist vision in championing “model minority” narratives, which claimed that the problems of minorities such as the Chinese and Filipinos would eventually be solved when they integrated fully with mainstream American culture. Just as she argued that Wright achieved artistic maturity by breaking away from sociological models and becoming an independent radical, Tolentino maintains that Bulosan and Wong ultimately rebelled against their sociological training by staking out positions as independent artists. But a stronger argument needs to be made to support this position. Her analysis of America Is in the Heart and Fifth Chinese Daughter, unlike her discussion of Native Son, lacks the detail and nuance needed to support the weight of her claims for these two...

Theatre histories: an introduction

Authors Acknowledgements Preface: Interpreting performances and cultures Part I: Performance and theatre in oral and written cultures before 1700 1. Oral, ritual, and shamanic performance Case studies: Yoruba ritual as and contingency in the ritual process Intepretive approach Theories of and improvisation Korean Shamanism and the power of speech Interpretive approach Speech act theory 2. Religious and civic festivals: Early drama and theatre in context Case studies: Classical Greek theatre: Looking at Oedipus Interpretive approach Cognitive spatial relations Christians and Moors: Medieval performance in Spain and the New World Interpretive approach Cultural hierarchy 3. Early theatre in the court, temple, and marketplace: Pleasure, power, and aesthetics Case studies: Plautus's plays: What's so funny? Interpretive approach, Part I Henri Bergson's theory of laughter Interpretive approach, Part 2 Bergson's theory in historical perspective Kuttiyattam Sanskrit theatre of India: Rasa-bhava aesthetic theory and the question of taste Interpretive approach Reception theory Case study: Kathakali dance-drama: Divine play and human suffering on stage Interpretive approach Ethnography and history The Silent Bell: The Japanese no play, Dojoji Interpretive approach Feminist and gender theory, modified for medieval Japan Part II: Theatre and print cultures, 1500-1900 4. Theatre and the state, 1600-1900 Case studies: Moliere and carnival laughter Interpretive approach Mikhail M. Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque Kabuki and bunraku: Mimesis and the hybrid body Interpretive approach Mimesis, hybridity, and the body Shakespearean sexuality in Twelfth Night Interpretive approach Queer theory 5. Theatres for knowledge through feeling, 1700-1900 6. Theatre, nation, and empire, 1750-1900 Case studies: Theatre iconology and the actor as icon: David Garrick Interpretive approach Cultural studies and theatre iconology Theatre and hegemony: Comparing popular melodramas Interpretive approach Cultural hegemony 6. Theatre, nation, and empire, 1750-1900 Case studies: Friedrich Schiller's vision of aesthetic education and the German dream of a national theatre Interpretive approach Studies in national/cultural identity The Playboy riots: Nationalism in the Irish theatre Interpretive approach Cognitive linguistics Part III: Theatre in modern media cultures, 1850-1970 7. Theatres of popular entertainment, 1850-1970 Case studies: Blacking up on the U.S. stage Interpretive approach Reification and utopia in popular culture British pantomime: How bad theatre remains popular Interpretive approach Phenomenology and history 8. Theatres of the avant-garde and their legacy, 1880-1970 Case studies: Psychological and sociological training for the actor Interpretive approach Cognitive psychology Discoursing on desire: Desire Under the Elms in the 1920s Interpretive approach Discourse theory 9. Modernism in drama and performance, 1890-1970 Case studies: Ibsen's A Doll House: If Nora were a material girl Interpretive approach Cultural materialism Modernism in Chekhov, Pirandello, and Beckett Interpretive approach Comparative analysis 10. Theatres for reform and revolution, 1880-1970 Case studies: Social drama in Kerala, India: Staging the revolution Interpretive approach Politics, ideology, history, and performance Brecht directs Mother Courage Interpretive approach Semiotics Part IV: Theatre and performance in the age of global communications, 1950 to the present 11. Rich and poor theatres of globalization Case studies: The vortex of Times Square Interpretive approach Vortices of behaviour Athol Fugard: Theatre of witnessing in South Africa Interpretive approach Social justice and the artist 12. Director, text, and performance in the postmodern world Case studies: The crisis of representation and the authenticity of performance: Antonin Artaud and Jacques Derrida Interpretive approach Deconstruction Global Shakespeare Interpretive approach Postcolonial criticism 13. Interculturalism, hybridity, tourism: The performing world on new terms Case studies: Whose Mahabharata is it anyway? The ethics and aesthetics of intercultural performance Interpretive approach The historian between two views of intercultural performance Imagining contemporary China: Gao Xingjian's Wild Man in post-Cultural Revolution China Interpretive approach Theories of national identity Backstage/frontstage: Ethnic tourist performances and identity in America's Little Switzerland Interpretive approach Sociological theories of tourism and everyday performance Glossary Index

Consorting with the Government Over National Security

Consorting with the Government Over National Security Bruce Kuklick (bio) Charles Thorpe . Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. xx + 413 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. 37.50 (cloth); 25.00 (paper). J. Robert Oppenheimer directed the Los Alamos project that built the American A-bomb during World War Two. An extraordinary scientist and intellect, he had pottered around in politics on the left edge of the New Deal before the war, involving himself with members of the Communist Party USA. Similar to many reflective people on the left in the 1930s, he may even for a time have been more than a fellow traveler. Although Oppenheimer trimmed his sails when he got the job at Los Alamos, his affiliations would even be questioned from 1942 to 1945. During the early part of the Cold War, although he moved on to commanding positions as a scientific advisor to the government about nuclear weapons, his political past came to haunt him. His doubts about the building of a thermonuclear weapon, the H-bomb, connected up with his supposed tilt toward the communist world. When political culture in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s developed rituals of public degradation for those whose former ideological commitments were disputed, Oppenheimer was destroyed. In 1954, in a celebrated case, his security clearance was revoked. While perhaps not as compelling a subject for study as Alger Hiss, Oppenheimer has attracted much attention from skilled historians. We have one of them in Charles Thorpe. Reviewers have widely praised his book, now in paperback, since it was first published in 2006. While Oppenheimer shows ability and competence, I would not judge it as earth shattering. My modest estimate stems from a simple fact. So much of a biographical nature has been published on Oppenheimer since 2000 that the possibilities are restricted for finding a conceptual or empirical path distinct from that taken by other scholars. In American Prometheus, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin have written the most readable and even gripping biography of Oppenheimer. 1 But, in my view, Bird and Sherwin lack a critical view of Oppenheimer's politics. Thorpe has more [End Page 268] detachment and less commitment to the left and to Oppenheimer's way of seeing things, and he provides more analysis about the policies of the period. At the same time, however, the engaged reader might want to use the richly detailed work of Bird and Sherwin as a background for understanding the points Thorpe wants to make. I sometimes felt that, while astute, Thorpe basically supplied an interpretative commentary on American Prometheus, although he has surely done his own extended and original research. Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect exemplifies a new genre of intellectual biography that perhaps was given birth by work in the history and sociology of science. Academics with training in both sociology and history hope to advance our grasp of developments in thought by avoiding the sometimes flat-footed techniques of conventional biographers of people of mind, and by using insights from more theoretically sophisticated vantage points. We now have a "sociology of ideas" that is employed in biography. An example that has gotten recent attention is Neil Gross's Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher (2008), but Thorpe, while not perfect, makes a better effort than Gross. Here's the issue. Intellectual historians employ a series of explanatory devices that many theorists say derive from "folk psychology." We talk about the motives of thinkers, and try to grasp their intentions in much the same way we would were we talking in an everyday way about the reasoning and understanding of our scholarly colleagues. The new sociologists of ideas believe we can do better than this. They have ways of studying intellectuals that can leverage us a little bit above the sphere of folk psychology. Thorpe's book has an outstanding feature. The sociological generalizations he uses to achieve this leverage actually help; he rarely obfuscates with jargon. While the sociology may not bear as much fruit as Thorpe sometimes intimates, he does generate a view of Oppenheimer not clearly seen in the literature previously. This perspective gives us a more complex...

Editor’s Introduction: Sociologists and Administrators

This thematic issue offers a set of articles dealing with relationships between sociology programs and academic administrators, written from a perspective that draws upon both sociological training and administrative experience. The participating authors have served in the offices of department chair, dean, vice president, provost and president. They accept the necessity of an executive function in higher education, while remaining loyal to their discipline and deeply concerned about its future within academia. The issue was made possible by the efforts of Professor Charles F. Hohm, presently Dean of the College of Natural and Behavioral Sciences at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where he also is professor of sociology. While serving as President of the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) in 2007, Professor Hohm organized a program focusing on sociology's place in the contemporary academy (see his "Preface"). The papers presented here were developed from those delivered at the PSA meetings. While the process was generally smooth, it required a considerable investment of time and effort, generously provided by Professor Hohm, to communicate with prospective contributors and help them fine-tune their work, while also keeping everyone alert to deadlines. For all that went into this project, I am sincerely grateful. The papers are arranged in two rough groupings, the first of which highlights the personal perspectives of their authors, while the second places more emphasis on sociological analysis and the examination of empirical data. There are several themes that unify the papers, especially: (1) what it feels like to be both a committed sociologist and an academic administrator; (2) how sociological training is helpful in performing administrative roles, including working for change within those roles; and (3) how sociological programs look to administrators, including our sociologically trained authors.

Some Issues of Particular Concern to Sociologists As Academic Administrators

As a sociologist who has served in deanships and other university administrative positions in the past 15 years, the author has been particularly concerned with race/class/gender issues in academia. This paper identified some of the issues and discussed the relevance of sociological training in addressing them.

Targeted and Situational Prevention of Physical Violence: In Response to Eisner’s and Homel’s Comments

I first want to thank Manuel Eisner and Ross Homel for having taken the time to read my paper and write a comment. I value very much their reflections for many reasons, including the following: (a) their training in mathematics (Homel) and sociology (Eisner) comforts my scientific anxieties and my lack of training in sociology; (b) their work on adult criminality should reassure traditional criminologists; (c) their dedication to prevention should make them credible to policy makers. It is heartening to read that they agree so much with my crusade to convince criminologists that they should seriously consider human development before adolescence, and especially before school entry. The fact that their main criticism converges so much also makes my response easier. Both Eisner and Homel stress the fact that, although early intervention is important for preventing the development of chronic violence, later interventions can also have important impact. The term chronic here is important. By chronic violence, I mean an individual who uses physical aggression much more frequently than his or her age group over many years. The recent data from numerous longitudinal studies is showing more and more clearly that adolescents and adults who chronically use physical aggression had that problem in early childhood and elementary school. There may be the odd cases who suffered some form of brain damage or who find themselves in very exceptional circumstances for long periods of time. Besides these odd cases, if there are no late-onset chronically violent individuals, then it stands to reason that effective early intervention would prevent the large majority of these cases. Why would we wait? And why would we expect that later interventions will be more cost effective than later ones? I completely agree that it is never too late to help. Our Montreal prevention experiment with aggressive–hyperactive elementary school boys from poor neighbourhoods showed that we could have a long-term impact on trajectories of physical aggression even if the intervention started at 7 years of age (Lacourse et al. 2002; Tremblay et al. 1995; Vitaro et al. 2001). But why wait until elementary school when we can give the support during the preschool years? It would save the child, his or her family, peers and neighbours so much misery. There is also good evidence that the cost would be much less and the benefits much Eur J Crim Policy Res (2007) 13:179–181 DOI 10.1007/s10610-007-9049-0

Dollars and Sense: Convincing Students That They Can Learn and Want to Learn Statistics

QUANTITATIVE METHODS ARE an integral part of much sociological research. For that reason, many sociology departments require a course in statistics as part of an undergraduate major in sociology, and most faculty view the undergraduate statistics course as a valuable part of an undergraduate student’s training in sociology. Unfortunately, most undergraduates do not feel the same. Instead, a majority of students fear and loathe the required statistics course. Students often postpone taking the course as long as possible and experience anger and anxiety during the class.

Sociology as a vocation: Reputations and group cultures in graduate school

Graduate training in sociology involves more than meeting organizationally imposed demands such as satisfying departmental requirements, taking exams, and completing a dissertation. More central is the development of identity through institutional and interactional forces. We examine the experience of graduate students as tied to the social psychological processes associated with professional training. We consider the faculty-student relationship, identifying how student identities as future sociologists are negotiated and constructed within a reputation market linked to status politics. Through this process, graduate students construct frames of interpretation that make sense of a status system in which criteria for evaluation are often variable, uncertain, or undisclosed. To recognize how graduate students fit into their occupational routines, we build upon three core disciplinary constructs: identity, reputation, and group culture. This perspective permits graduate education to be grounded in sociological understandings, underlining the role of a sociological imagination. We propose strategies that sociology departments might follow to facilitate the professional socialization of graduate students, emphasizing the establishment of group culture and presentational norms. In the absence of these changes, we offer advice to graduate students on navigating their current programs.

Conducting Multiracial Feminist Family Research: Challenges and Rewards of Recruiting a Diverse Sample

In order to fully understand families, sociologists must place race, class, gender, and sexuality at the center of their research. My graduate training in sociology guided me toward a feminist analysis of the intersections of race, class, and gender--what Baca Zinn and Dill (1996) referred to as feminism. Multiracial feminism is a social structural and social constructionist approach that challenge[s] the hegemony of feminisms constructed primarily around the lives of white middle-class (Baca Zinn & Dill, 1996, p. 323). Rather than thinking about women as a cohesive group, multiracial feminism places difference at the center of its analysis to examine how women are dissimilar from one another based on race and class. Just as feminists critique non-feminists for marginalizing women, multiracial feminism critiques earlier feminisms for making invisible and distorting the lives of women of color (Baca Zinn & Dill, 1996).Many sociologists agree that theory drives method (Deem, 2002; Harding, 1991; Thompson, 1992). A commitment to multiracial feminism, therefore, suggests that researchers must conduct studies focusing on how people's experiences differ based on their specific race, class, gender, and sexual locations. For this study, I researched the lesbian baby boom (Lewin, 1993; O'Sullivan, 1995; Weston, 1991), focusing on lesbians' decisions to become mothers or remain childfree. The lesbian baby boom has been forming over the past 20 to 30 years. It started with women who became mothers within heterosexual identities and then later identified as lesbians, a group that I refer to as first-generation lesbian mothers. More recently, there has been an increase in second-generation lesbian mothers, that is, lesbians within their identities as lesbians who have been choosing motherhood by adopting, birthing children, and becoming foster parents (Lewin 1993; Silber 1991). At the turn of the millennium, an estimated 22 percent of partnered lesbians had children in their homes (Black, Gates, Sanders, & Taylor 2000). Furthermore, somewhere between 780,000 and 9 million children live in lesbian and gay families (Stacey & Biblarz 2001).While lesbians have been forming families both with and without children over the past 20 to 30 years, they have been doing so within a rocky and often contradictory social and cultural climate. Despite this trend, the few studies conducted on children of lesbian families show that these children are at least as normal and healthy as children raised in heterosexual families (Stacey & Biblarz, 2001). Children of lesbians show no more psychotic disorders, anxiety levels, depression, emotional, or behavioral problems than those raised in heterosexual families. Furthermore, children of lesbian parents have the same quality of peer relationships as children of heterosexual parents (Golombok & Tasker, 1997; Mooney-Somers & Golombok, 2000; Patterson, 1996; Stacey & Biblarz, 2001).Because much of the literature on lesbian families to date has focused on lesbian mothers from White, middle-class backgrounds (Demo & Allen, 1996; Morningstar, 1999), one of my major research questions was how race, class, gender, and sexuality shape lesbians' decision-making processes. Based on these research questions, my study required that I recruit a diverse sample of lesbians.Although there are existing debates as to whether or not there is a feminist methodology (e.g., Allen, 2004; Baber, 2004; Chafetz, 2004; Gorelick, 1991; Stacey, 1988, Thompson, 1992), I take the position that feminist methodology does exist. In this article, I discuss the importance of conducting feminist family research guided by multiracial feminism and describe the challenges, ways of surmounting those challenges, and rewards of recruiting a diverse sample. My premise is that despite the difficulties of recruiting a diverse sample, the rich findings such a sample produces makes the recruiting effort worthwhile because it expands our understanding of families. …

The impact of sociological orientation on pedagogy: A reconsideration of teacher training in sociology Ph.D. Departments

The emphasis in sociology Ph.D. programs continues to be on training researchers rather than teachers. This is a serious mistake, given the overwhelming proportion of students who go on to academic careers that require at least some time in the classroom. Departments that offer some type of graduate training in teaching focus almost exclusively on the students’ mastery of pedagogical strategies—tools, tips, and techniques for improving their instruction. But this approach neglects students’ assumptions about sociology as a discipline—or their sociological orientations—that underlie and inform their pedagogical choices. This paper explicates the relationship between sociological orientation and pedagogical practice, and asserts that graduate students need to consider their orientation to the discipline before stepping inside a classroom. This may be effectively accomplished through a required year-long seminar to be taken during the second year of graduate study. The first semester would be devoted to the issues, debates, and questions that currently characterize the discipline. The second would consider the “nuts and bolts” of teaching, and how pedagogical practice derives from sociological orientation. Students would also work as teaching assistants before, during, and after completing the seminar. They would then be required to teach at least one course of their choice before graduating. During this first teaching experience, each graduate student would work closely with a faculty mentor.

Trudy L. Bush

HomeCirculationVol. 104, No. 12Trudy L. Bush Free AccessObituaryPDF/EPUBAboutView PDFView EPUBSections ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload citationsTrack citationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InMendeleyReddit Jump toFree AccessObituaryPDF/EPUBTrudy L. Bush David M. Herrington, MD, MHS, Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, MD and Thomas B. Clarkson, DVM David M. HerringtonDavid M. Herrington Search for more papers by this author , Elizabeth Barrett-ConnorElizabeth Barrett-Connor Search for more papers by this author and Thomas B. ClarksonThomas B. Clarkson Search for more papers by this author Originally published18 Sep 2001https://doi.org/10.1161/hc3701.096066Circulation. 2001;104:1332Recently, the fields of cardiovascular epidemiology and women’s health were dealt a heavy blow with the premature and unexpected death of Dr Trudy Bush (1949 to 2001). At the time of her demise (age 52), she was one of the foremost authorities on the cardiovascular effects of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women. Sadly, the shutters on her life were closed just as some of the most illuminating new knowledge about estrogen and heart disease was emerging on the horizon—new knowledge that came to light in part as a result of her vision and guidance. Dr Bush’s own research and her advice to the many other investigators who sought her counsel was characterized by originality. She was always offering novel perspectives on data, generating new hypotheses, and challenging us all to move forward toward the goal of improved health and longevity for older women.Dr Bush’s training in sociology and epidemiology at Penn State University and The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health set the stage for a remarkably productive career. In 1983 and again in 1987, she authored 2 of the most frequently cited papers concerning the relationship between postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy and cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.1,2 She went on to serve as a principal investigator of both of the first large clinical trials designed to understand more clearly the effects of hormone replacement therapy on the risk for heart disease, the Postmenopausal Estrogen/Progestin Intervention trial (PEPI)3 and the Heart and Estrogen/Progestin Replacement Study (HERS).4 She also made important contributions to the understanding of other chronic diseases that are common in postmenopausal women, including osteoporosis and breast and endometrial carcinoma. In addition to her research, she supported the scientific community by serving as an advisor or committee member for numerous national and international organizations, including the American Heart Association, the National Institutes of Health, The US General Accounting Office, and the Institute of Medicine.Those of us who were fortunate enough to know Dr Bush as a friend and colleague will always remember her creativity, her willingness to challenge conventional paradigms, and her gentle sense of humor. These attributes also made her an ideal mentor to the many students she taught and advised during her roughly 20-year career at Shippensburg State College in Pennsylvania, the University of Oklahoma, Columbia University, The Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Maryland.Like many great people, her considerable successes were preceded by tremendous adversity early in life. Ultimately, however, she found joy and solace in the long-term support of her partner Dr Sue Miller and their adored daughter, Emily.It is a sad twist of irony that Dr Bush may have succumbed to the very disease (cardiovascular disease) that was the principal focus of her career. Fittingly, her family has asked that in remembrance of Dr Bush, donations can be made to the American Heart Association.References1 Bush TL, Cowan LD, Barrett-Connor E, et al. Estrogen use and all-cause mortality: preliminary results from the Lipid Research Clinics Program Follow-Up Study. JAMA. . 1983; 249: 903–906.CrossrefMedlineGoogle Scholar2 Bush TL, Barrett-Connor E, Cowan LD, et al. Cardiovascular mortality and noncontraceptive use of estrogen in women: results from the Lipid Research Clinics Program Follow-Up Study. Circulation. . 1987; 75: 1102–1109.CrossrefMedlineGoogle Scholar3 The Writing Group for the Postmenopausal Estrogen Progestin Intervention Trial. Effects of estrogen or estrogen/progestin regimens on heart disease risk factors in postmenopausal women. JAMA. . 1995; 273: 199–208.CrossrefMedlineGoogle Scholar4 Hulley S, Grady D, Bush T, et al. Randomized trial of estrogen plus progestin for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease in postmenopausal women. JAMA. . 1998; 280: 605–613.CrossrefMedlineGoogle Scholar Previous Back to top Next FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails September 18, 2001Vol 104, Issue 12 Advertisement Article InformationMetrics https://doi.org/10.1161/hc3701.096066 Originally publishedSeptember 18, 2001 PDF download Advertisement

Power and change: Andrew Pettigrew on strategy and change

Andrew Pettigrew is professor of strategy and organization at Warwick Business School. U.K.. where between 1985 and 1995 he founded and directed the Center for Corporate Strategy and Change. Professor Pettigrew received his training in sociology and anthropology and conducted his first research amongst the Sebeii people in Uganda. He received his Ph.D. from Manchester Business School in 1970. and has held academic appointments at Yale University. London Business School, and the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels. For part of the academic year 2001-2002, he will be a visiting professor at Harvard Business School. Professor Pettigrew has written, coauthored, or edited 16 books, and has published in all the top management journals in the U.S. and Europe. His latest books are The Innovating Organization, edited with Evelyn Fenton (London. Sage, 2000), and the Handbook of Strategy and Management, edited with Howard Thomas and Richard Whittington (London, Sage, 2001). Andrew Pettigrew was the first chairman of the British Academy of Management (1987-1990). and was its president from 1990 to 1993. In 1995, he was elected distinguished scholar of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. He is a fellow of the Academy of Management and the British Academy of Management. In 1999. he was the only management academic to be elected a founding academician of the Academy of the Social Sciences. His current research interests include studies of the boards and directors of the U.K.'s top 500 companies, and new forms of organizing and company performance in major corporations in Europe, Japan, and the U.S.

Editor’s introduction: Research paradigms and teaching strategies

This issue combines emphases on research and teaching in presenting a set of papers that call for fresh thinking and innovative collaboration. David Horton Smith shares his unique perspective that blends autobiography with the history of an intellectual movement and practical advice for launching a new field. Former students of Professor Smith, including myself, will recognize in the paper a characteristic creative energy and an insatiable appetite for information. Years ago, after visits to his Boston College office dominated by mountains of computer printouts, some of us would joke about awakening one morning to the headline, "Sociologist killed by falling data." Happily that did not occur and Professor Smith succeeded in building up the new field of non-profit and voluntary action research. Vincent Jeffries shares Smith's emphasis on altruism, but looks inward to morality, spirituality and personal transformation. Beginning with Pitirim A. Sorokin's integral epistemology, which he characterizes as an "incipient paradigm," Jeffries builds a framework that he considers applicable to diverse cultural settings. Again like Smith, he adopts a broadly interdisciplinary outlook that draws not only from psychology, psychiatry and anthropology but also from philosophy and theology. Jeffries contends that social scientific paradigms of the new century will discard the assumption that science requires denial of a spiritual dimension to human experience. Stanley Eitzen, Maxine Baca Zinn and Steven Gold call for a new approach to graduate training in sociology that will better prepare students for the nonacademic careers that will provide most employment opportunities in the decades ahead. These authors also criticize other stagnant features of graduate education, such as archaic intellectual debates, and they present models of constructive change in some U.S. universities. Lee Smithey, Kathleen Nybroten and Jason LaTurner likewise examine graduate education and recount a methodological experiment in which graduate students conducted a departmental assessment. They report a variety of benefits to both the students and the organization that flowed from the evaluation process. Marina Karides and Joya Misra address problems in undergraduate education, particularly the "mass class" of several hundred students that imposes an imper-

"Train the Whole Scholar": A Developmentally Based Program for Teaching Assistant Training in Sociology

The literature on teacher education stresses that learning to teach is a developmental process, and therefore, teacher training programs should incorporate a developmental model. We review existing theory and research on the development and training of graduate teaching assistants and apply this perspective to an individual teaching assistant training program at the University of Washington, a large research university. This training program was designed, and has been modified over the past 20 years, to draw on current lines of thinking regarding teaching assistant training practices. Hence, it is organized around the developmental and cognitive issues facing new, and advanced, graduate assistants. Using evaluative program data and feedback from those who have completed this training program, we elaborate upon the usefulness of a developmental approach for the preparation and training of graduate assistants in sociology