intro to sociology syllabus project

I’m retooling my introduction to sociology syllabus for the spring. Unfortunately, there are almost no syllabuses left on the open web to use for inspiration. Blackboard and the like have walled off most of our teaching materials from Google. ASA’s teaching resources site never really took off and sections no longer produce bound volumes with exemplar syllabuses and activities. Combined, this means that college instructors designing courses now have fewer resources than we did a decade ago. This is rather amazing, especially compared with the rise in our access to scholarship and data.

Anyway, I thought I would put up this post as a spot to share syllabuses for introduction to sociology courses.^* If you send me your syllabus, I will post it in the table below. I’m seeding the repository with my syllabus from the fall.

Join the fun. Send me your syllabus.

Instructor	Text	Reader	Document
Neal Caren (UNC-CH)	Sociology Project 2.5	None	Syllabus
Anya Galli Robertson (Maryland)	Sociology Project 2.5	None	Syllabus
Nathan Palmer (Georgia Southern)	Sociology Project 2.5	None	Syllabus
Dan Morrison (Vanderbilt)	Sociology Project	None	Syllabus
Greg Scott (Depaul)	Sociology Project	Everyday Sociology	Syllabus
Jessica Calarco (Indiana)	You May Ask Yourself	None	Syllabus
C.J. Pascoe (Oregon)	You May Ask Yourself	None	Syllabus Assignments
Tina Fetner (McMaster)	You May Ask Yourself	None	Syllabus Assignments
Stephanie Medley-Rath (IUK)	You May Ask Yourself	None	Syllabus
Jason Orne (Drexel)	You May Ask Yourself	None	Syllabus
Tania Jenkins (Temple)	You May Ask Yourself	None	Syllabus (Health focus)
Jess Hardie (Hunter)	You May Ask Yourself	None	Syllabus
Chris Chambers (Northeastern)	You May Ask Yourself	None	Syllabus
Vivian Varela (Mendocino)	You May Ask Yourself	None	Syllabus
Craig Rawlings (Northwestern)	You May Ask Yourself	Down to Earth Sociology	Syllabus
Melissa Pirkey (Emory)	None	Down to Earth Sociology	Syllabus
Kathy Liddle (Toronto)	Exploring Sociology	None	Syllabus
Stephanie Medley-Rath (IUK)	Sociology: A Brief Introduction	None	Syllabus
Michael Buhl (Collin College)	Essentials of Sociology	None	Syllabus Assignments
Kathleen Lowney (Valdosta State)	The Real World	None	Syllabus
Brenden Beck (Hunter)	American Society	None	Syllabus
Syed Ali (LIU Brooklyn)	None	Contexts Reader	Syllabus Exams
jimi adams (American)	None	None	Syllabus
Lane Kenworthy (UCSD)	None	None	Syllabus
Andy Perrin (UNC-CH)	None	None	Syllabus
Terrence McDonnell (Notre Dame)	None	None	Syllabus

^* If this works, I’ll try it with other courses.

surveys are hard work

[See updates below]

John Villasenor’s study on free speech attitudes among college students has received some attention.

In one of the questions he asked, only 47% of students favored, “an open learning environment where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints, even if it means allowing speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups of people.” In contrast, 53% favored speech restrictions to, “create a positive learning environment.”

This is a huge swing from last year when Gallup asked the same question. They found that only 22% favored speech restrictions.

This 30-point shift could be because attitudes changed rapidly. Villasenor’s study was immediately after Charlottesville, for example, and students might be more primed to think about Nazi’s marching on their campus.

It could also be because of differences in survey methods. Surveying college students is really hard.

academic hot takes

A post over at orgtheory reminded me of this nice bit by Jeff Goodwin:

Hypothesis number one: For any book to become widely cited today, let alone to influence how people think, it must be reducible to a few general and easily grasped formulations. Many texts are “formulated,” furthermore, not by their authors, but by more or less officially designated readers (call them DRs), including reviewers for academic journals. Books that cannot be formulaically summarized by DRs, accurately or otherwise, are unlikely to generate much discussion, let alone change minds.

The process of “formulation” typically results in simplifications, half-truths, and outright errors, particularly when DRs are ill-disposed toward a particular text. The more complex the text, moreover, the more simplification is essential if the “formulation” that is a prerequisite of broad influence is to occur at all. Ensuing “discussions” and “debates” about a particular text often build upon these simplifications, half-truths, and errors. Before long, scholars can be “influenced” by these “debates,” or even participate in them without having read the text supposedly at issue; one need simply familiarize oneself with the formulaic “summaries” and “discussions” of it that DRs have produced.

Hypothesis number two: No book can claim to be “influential” today until large numbers of people who have not read it (or have not read beyond its introduction) have strong opinions about it. In fact, some of the most frequently cited books are, paradoxically, not very widely (or closely) read at all.

Hypothesis number three: A text that actually had to be carefully read by large numbers of people in order to be “understood” would never become “influential.”

Goodwin, Jeff. 1996. “How to Become a Dominant American Social Scientist: The Case of Theda Skocpol.” Contemporary Sociology  293-295.

hot sociology, 2014 edition

It is somewhat boring that my annual list of the most cited works in sociological journals always puts Bourdieu’s Distinction at the top. That was going to be the case again this year, so I decided to change the sorting algorithm to measure “hotness”.

An article’s hotness is the number of cites it received in sociological journals this year divided by the log of the number of years since publication. This means that a work that was published in 2010 and cited 18 times in 2014, like Putnam and Campbell’s American Grace scores slightly higher than something that was cited 34 times last year but published in 2000, like Putnam’s Bowling Alone. I tried different variations of what to put in the numerator and denominator, but this method 1) had the most pleasing mix of new and old things and 2) knocked Distinction all the way down to #2.

So, the 63 hottest articles in sociology last year were:

paula england response

I sent a short note to ASA President Paula England on the letterhead issue. She wrote that I was free to share the information on scatterplot, so here it is:

Thanks for your note.  The policy of the Executive Officer, Sally Hillsman, stretching back a number of years has been that elected officers of ASA may use ASA letterhead when writing on ASA business if they wish.  As you may know, the question of whether Salaita’s treatment abrogated academic freedom and whether ASA should speak out was raised at the end of the Council Meeting in August.  Council could have voted an official ASA position, but there was no time for that, so members informally encouraged me to write as President if I decided it was appropriate.  I drafted a letter, but decided to see if a few other officers agreed.  Not everyone did, so at first my call was to say nothing.  Later, however, the three presidents and secretary decided we did want to speak out. We used ASA letterhead, as we were writing as presidents and secretary of the ASA, but I was careful to word the letter not to imply that this was an official ASA position (that would be appropriate only if Council had voted).  Two elected officers who didn’t agree with our letter decided to write a letter taking a different position, and approached the Executive Officer about whether they too could send it on ASA stationery.  Sally consulted with me, and articulated what the policy had been. Given the past policy, I felt the fair thing to do was grant their request.

Regarding your question about postings under “Advocacy” on Member News and Notes, I’m told by ASA staff that “Advocacy” is just an internal file name (a bit of a residual category), not a title used in the text of News and Notes.

what happened in 1999?

From the ASA permission form sent to authors when a publisher wants to reprint an article that appeared in an ASA journal:

Prior to 1999, ASA policy on revenue sharing with its authors stated that proceeds will be shared equally by the author(s) of the article and the ASA as copyright holder. For articles published prior to 1999, the ASA will collect all fees and will disburse one half of these receipts to authors upon collection from the requestor, unless you agree to donate your share to the ASA. For articles published in 1999 and later, ASA retains all fees received for reprint permission requests. (This applies to journal articles only). 

 

ritzer on ritzer on ritzer

George Ritzer, Editor in Chief, The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd Edition, in an email to me:

We would like to invite you to contribute to Wiley-Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of Sociology, Second Edition, under the general editorship of George Ritzer… The Author will be entitled to receive access to the electronic (online) version of the encyclopedia for a period of two years…  In addition, the Author will have the right to purchase the entire set of volumes of the current print edition of the Work for personal use at a discount of 25% from the published price, copies of any work published by the publishers and currently in print, provided that all such purchases, including purchases of the Work, are paid for in advance by the Author.

George Ritzer, social theorist:

For example, when you write product reviews for Amazon.com you are enhancing the value of that site and the company; you are working for them and you are not being paid for that work…To put it baldly, the value of these computer-based businesses is based largely on the “work”- those clicks and likes- that you do for them free of charge. In a capitalist world you ought to be paid by all of them, but of course you are not paid. From the perspective of the critics of capitalism, you are being exploited by firms such as Google and Facebook (Fuchs, 2013). In fact, you are being exploited more than the paid workers in the capitalist system. Most of them are being paid relatively little, but you are paid nothing at all. Low paid work often yields great profits, but work that is unpaid leads to an even higher rate of profit.

I asked George Ritzer about this tension. He wrote:

As you know, this is a high compliment- using my ideas.. even if only to critique me. Your point is well-taken, but I am one of the exploited low-paid workers in the quotation (on a per hour basis for the number of hours it takes to edit a 2500-entry encyclopedia…far less than the minimum wage). I am also a prosumer in this case “consuming” the entries and “producing” edits, comments, etc. If there is an exploiter here, it is Wiley-Blackwell, but this is endemic to academic publishing. When we submit articles to journals owned by them (and SAGE, etc) we are the prosumers of those articles (and others), we are paid nothing, and they are profitable companies in large part because of the free work done by authors. There’s a broader critique here.

By my calculation Wiley, an academic publisher, has earned about a billion dollars in profit since the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Sociology came out.

i decided to ride on an available silver space ship

Cal State Northridge sociologist Lewis Yablonsky passed away last month at the age of 89. The LA Times describes him as, “A leading figure in sociology in the 1960s and ’70s … who gained national prominence as a sociologist, criminologist and author.” In 2003, he received the ASA’s “Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology.”

The Times obituary notes that, “Although Yablonsky was opposed to recreational drug use, he tried marijuana and went on an LSD trip as part of his study” of hippies, detailed in his 1968 book “The Hippie Trip.” The book isn’t available online, but I scanned in the chapter where he describes his LSD trip with his wife Donna who he met while doing research, in “a psychodrama session at Synanon.” Spoilers after the jump.

52 works that inspired sociologists this year

1. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard University Press, 1984.
2. Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Transaction Books, 2009.
3. Putnam, Robert D. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster, 2001.
4. Raudenbush, Stephen W. Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods. Vol. 1. Sage, 2002.
5. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy Denton. American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Harvard University Press, 1993.
6. Goffman, Erving. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY (1959).
7. Steensland, Brian, Lynn D. Robinson, W. Bradford Wilcox, Jerry Z. Park, Mark D. Regnerus, and Robert D. Woodberry. “The measure of American religion: Toward improving the state of the art.” Social Forces 79, no. 1 (2000): 291-318.
8. Swidler, Ann. “Culture in action: Symbols and strategies.” American sociological review (1986): 273-286.
9. McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook. “Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks.” Annual review of sociology (2001): 415-444.

nra membership, 2013 edition

The NRA added more than 500,000 members in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, based on their latest magazine circulation reports.

Back in January and February, the NRA was making claims about its size and growth to ward off potential gun control legislation after the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, CT. Mother Jones and the Washington Post both looked into the claims using my method of examining the publicly available numbers of paid subscribers to the three major NRA publications. Since NRA membership comes with a free subscription to one of their magazine and that is the only way to subscribe, I suspect that the total number of subscribers is a good proxy for the total number of members.

The NRA recently release circulation reports for the first six months of 2013, giving us the first look at post Newton membership. The total number of subscribers to NRA publications went from 3,096,145 to 3,671,054. The biggest jump was between February and March, when the number of subscribers jumped by 184,575. Given the lag between when people sign up and when they are added to the magazine roles, this most likely reflects change in membership during December, the month of the shooting. This might also underestimate the number of new members that month because there was probably some existing members who choose not to renew their membership during that a month.

This blog also hosted a contest to see who could predict the number of members in June of 2013. Congratulations to Ben Lind for having the closest guess with 3,094,723. This is a tricky time series to estimate because of its strongly cyclical nature. While some of the ups and downs follow the political calendar, others, like the most recent surge, are due to well-framed responses to threats, both of which are harder to predict. My guess is the NRA continues to grow but at slightly slower pace and finishes the year with close to 4 million members.

I’ve made the complete time series available.

sociology clusters, 1900-2010

As a follow up to my look at contemporary sociology, I thought I would look at where we’ve been.

I grabbed all the available articles published in the four major general interest sociology journals: AJS (starting in 1900), ASR (starting in 1920 ), Social Forces (starting in 1922) and Social Problems (starting in 1956). I used my RefCliq program to analyze clusters of citations by decade.

Below, I’ve included the major clusters and central author. If you click on the decade, you can see the full reports. I’ve would say the results are strongly correlated with trends in elite sociology, but with a couple of caveats. In addition to problems with how references are reported and recorded, works/areas that span clusters are often misplaced. This problem is likely made worse studying this set of journals, which often have editors that specifically ask that articles, “speak more widely to different areas of the discipline.” Also, articles from the first thirty years of sociology don’t really look like modern articles, so I’m not sure what the reference analysis tells us. That said, I think it’s a quick and easy way to look at major trends in our field.

clusters of sociology

Kieran’s recent analysis of philosophy citations reminded me that I’ve wanted to publish something similar for sociology.  So here it is and here’s how you can build a  reference network  at home.

but what do they do?

Social workers (9%), elementary and middle school teachers (6%), counselors (4%), managers, all other (4%), lawyers (3%), secretaries and administrative assistants (2%), postsecondary teachers (2%), police and sheriff’s patrol officers (2%), human resources workers (2%), first-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers (2%), social and community service managers (2%), sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing (2%), and education administrators (2%).

According to the American Community Survey, those are the most common occupations for  full-time employed people ages 25-55 who were sociology majors in college. To put this in context, I made a graph showing the links between occupations and majors.

but who do they marry?

A recent report out of Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce recently highlighted variation in income and unemployment by college major. I’m not a fan of this sort of thing, but it did alert me to the fact that the Census’s American Community Survey includes data on college majors. Over at IPUMS, not only can you get the data in an easy to use form, but you can also link respondents to other people in the household with the click of a button. Obviously, I was interested in figuring out how often undergraduate sociology majors marry each other.

ncaa women’s lacrosse championship predictions

My predictions for the NCAA Women’s Lacrosse Championship.