A weekly link round-up of sociological work – work by sociologists, referencing sociologists, or just of interest to sociologists. This scatterplot feature is co-produced with Mike Bader.
Continue reading “sunday morning sociology, crisis in the humanities edition”
In 1996, William Sewell published one of the most important works in historical sociology, “Three Temporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociology” (working paper from 1990 available here!). The essay argued that classic works of sociology too often followed the wrong approaches to temporality. Iconic works of historical sociology often explicitly or implicitly invoked teleological or experimental modes of temporality. In contrast, Sewell argued that historical sociologists should instead approach temporality as eventful. Since then, historical sociologists have largely strived to do just that.
While thinking about Sewell’s schema for a paper I’m writing on Polanyi, I realized that the typology was useful for making sense of a very different context: roleplaying games (RPGs). In this post, I’ll briefly explain Sewell’s argument by showing how the three temporalities map onto three ways of playing D&D (or, really, any similar tabletop RPG). Unlike with historical sociology, I will not be making an argument that one way of playing is “better”, though I do think we can learn something from Sewell’s typology about why the modes of play analogous to teleological and experimental temporality are frequently unsatisfying, and about the ingredients of a good eventful campaign.
The following is a guest post by Jessica Calarco.
The idea of the hidden curriculum has a long history in sociology. As with most sociological terms (see also: culture, social capital, organization, structure, etc.), it’s easy to find a dozen different definitions floating around in the literature. In my own research, I talk about the hidden curriculum as the knowledge and skills that matter for student success but aren’t explicitly taught.
There’s a hidden curriculum at every level of schooling. From preschool to postdocs. In a recent thread on Twitter, I talked about the importance of uncovering the hidden curriculum. I talked about how important it is to talk about times we’ve been embarrassed or hurt by things we didn’t know.
Continue reading “guest post: grad school’s hidden curriculum”
Continue reading “sunday morning sociology, by the numbers edition”
A weekly link round-up of sociological work – work by sociologists, referencing sociologists, or just of interest to sociologists. This scatterplot feature is co-produced with Mike Bader. Continue reading “sunday morning sociology, abolish ice edition”
Last night, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Very little about this was surprising. Kavanaugh is exactly the sort of judge everyone assumed would be nominated – endorsed by rightwing organizations like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, and possibly even picked by Justice Kennedy himself. I was curious to see how Senators reacted to this announcement. The Democrats have 49 seats in the Senate (counting Democratic-leaning independents), and very little power to stop the nomination. The issue for me is not whether the Democrats will show sufficient unity to block Kavanaugh – that doesn’t seem possible, even if they were united. Rather, my question was, are we in a political crisis? That is, how do relevant political elites construct the current moment? Is it exceptional? If so, in what ways? Or is it business as usual?
A weekly link round-up of sociological work – work by sociologists, referencing sociologists, or just of interest to sociologists. This scatterplot feature is co-produced with Mike Bader.
Continue reading “sunday morning sociology, american exceptionalism edition”
