Spring 2012 begins with lots of good news

We’re enjoying a cool, sunny day here in Austin, looking forward to our first Spiderhouse Salon of the spring semester tomorrow at 4:30. Camaraderie, productivity and collaborative discourse and research opportunities make life in Tejasarino (quoting Amanda) memorable and successful. A few good examples from this month alone:

Kudos to Angela Stroud who accepted a tenure track Assistant Professor position at Northland College in the Department of Social Responsibility’s focus on Social Justice! The trek from Austin, TX to Ashland, WI will be an incredible journey for Angela and her family. Send pictures!

Congratulations to Kate Prickett who received two awards at The 2011 Gerontological Society of America Annual Scientific Meeting. For her paper entitled: “Contextualizing Mexican American Living Arrangements: The New Old Age and the Constraints of Culture.”

Great news for Tod Hamilton, 2010 UT SOC grad who has accepted an assistant professor position at Princeton! Kudos Tod!

A very hearty congratulations to Nicolette Manglos who has accepted an assistant professor position from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts and to Erin Hofmann who will be an assistant professor at Utah State. Great news Nicolette and Erin!

We are indeed fortunate to enjoy both professional opportunities and success along with Austin’s fabulous quality of life. It will be a pleasure to welcome new members to our community in 2012 and share these victories both large and small.

Educational Disadvantages Associated with Race Still Persist in Brazil Despite Improvements, New Study Shows

Despite notable improvements in educational levels and opportunity during the past three decades, disadvantages associated with race still persist in Brazil, according to new research at The University of Texas at Austin.

Although educational advantages for white over black and pardo (mixed-race) adolescents declined considerably in Brazil, the gap is still significant, with whites completing nearly one year more of education.

Sociologist and Population Research Center affiliate Leticia Marteleto investigated educational inequalities using the nationally representative data from Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios from 1982 to 2007. Her findings will be published in the February issue of the journal Demography.

“Although the educational advantage of whites has persisted over this period, I found that the significance of race as it relates to education has changed in important ways,” Marteleto said.

By 2007, adolescents who identified themselves as blacks and pardos became more similar in their education levels, whereas in the past blacks had greater disadvantages, according to the study. Marteleto tested two possible explanations for this shift: structural changes in income levels and parents’ education, and shifts in racial classification.

Her findings suggest the educational gap has closed in part because of the large gains in family resources among black adolescents and a shift in racial labeling.

In 1982 only 13.2 percent of adolescents who identified themselves as black had finished primary school by ages 17 and 18, compared with 21.5 percent of their pardo peers. In 2007, the gap for primary school completion had disappeared.

The second potential explanation for the closing educational gap between pardo and black Brazilians is a shift in racial identity. Children of college-educated black fathers and mothers have a greater probability of being identified by their family as black in 2007, while in 1982 these associations were still considered negative. This seems to explain — at least in part  — some of the increases in the educational attainment of those identified as black in relation to pardo, since highly educated Brazilians now have a disproportionately higher likelihood of identifying their children as black rather than either white or pardo.

Marteleto said the current debate about recent race-based affirmative action policies being implemented in Brazilian universities has engaged its population at a national level and can offer valuable insights to the literatures of educational opportunity and race everywhere.

“My research shows that educational disadvantages have recently assumed a dichotomous nature based on black and white in Brazil,” Marteleto said. “While in the United States the growth in racial and ethnic diversity has led researchers to speculate that the black-white dichotomy is losing its salience for social inequalities — and that the country will soon resemble Brazil as a result of racial mixing — Brazil seems to be headed in the opposite direction, at least in regard to racial inequalities in education.”

For more information, contact: Michelle Bryant, College of Liberal Arts, 512-232-4730;  Leticia Marteleto, Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts, 512-471-8302.

What Makes People Give?

During the “season of giving,” calls for donations are as plentiful as candy canes and eggnog. From bell-ringing Santas to toy donation drives, generous Americans make it the most wonderful time of the year for many charities.

What motivates this outpouring of good will? Americans donated nearly $300 billion in 2011, surpassing the gross domestic product of all but 33 countries in the world, according to a 2010 report by the Giving USA Foundation. Though the tradition of giving has existed for centuries, researchers have only begun to explore this question in the past 20 years.

At the forefront of this burgeoning field of study, social scientists at The University of Texas at Austin are examining the many reasons why some people give and some don’t.

Pamela Paxton, professor of sociology and government, studies how individual characteristics and social forces affect generosity.

With a $148,000 grant from the Science of Generosity Initiative at the University of Notre Dame, sociologist Pamela Paxton, the Centennial Commission Professor of the Liberal Arts, is breaking new ground in the science of giving. Using data from two cross-national surveys, she’s examining how the social, economic and political structures of nations affect generosity. She is among the first social scientists to look at both the personal factors and larger societal forces that drive generosity.

Although she recently embarked on this study in 2010, she has preliminary results that suggest three factors influence our charitable impulses: Resources, opportunity and social norms. Paxton speculates the surge in giving during the holidays comes from an abundance of opportunities to get involved.

“Being asked to donate and volunteer makes a big difference,” said Paxton, professor of sociology and research affiliate in the Population Research Center and the Department of Government. People are also more likely to give because the social norm of giving is more pronounced during this time of year.”

The social pressure to give is especially prominant among people with money and education.

“Well educated people are more likely to acquire the civic skills necessary to volunteer, and they’re more informed about social issues like poverty,” she said. “Social networks are also very important. If you’re surrounded by people who donate and volunteer, you’re more likely to do the same.”

It may come to no surprise that religious people are more involved in philanthropic activities, yet research shows that even nonreligious people are more prone to giving back if they live in communities where many people attend religious services.

“Social networks matter – even if you’re not involved in church or a philanthropic group,” Paxton said. When we’re surrounded by a social network of civic-minded people, we’re more likely to volunteer because of increased recruitment and motivation. We might see these processes when a friend asks if we’d like to help out at a homeless shelter, or if we hear about a church food drive from an acquaintance.”

Researchers have long questioned the existence of altruism, arguing that if people “feel good” after giving or volunteering, it cannot be truly altruistic behavior. Yet Paxton isn’t interested in weighing in on the debate.

“Whether altruism exists doesn’t matter to me,” Paxton said. “What does interest me is the fact that generosity and altruism are central to a well functioning society. I don’t think you have to answer this question in a philosophical sense to understand the causes and consequences of generosity.”

Learning by example

Whether anyone can truly be selfless remains a mystery. However, Marlone Henderson, assistant professor of psychology, found that when people see others demonstrating altruistic acts, they are more inspired to get off the couch and into the soup kitchen.

Over the course of five studies, Henderson and his research team looked at the ways people are motivated to give their time and money to a charitable cause. Respondents were more motivated to give to a cause, he found, when they learned of others helping the less fortunate in different countries.

“When people learn about others who are going outside their own communities to help people in need – standing little to gain – they are reminded of their own apathy,” Henderson said. “But rather than feeling guilty, they see these programs as glowing examples of good will.”As part of the study, the 626 respondents were given descriptions of university student civic groups that help disadvantaged children in a school mentoring program. The programs are fictitious, however the respondents believed them to be real and were prepared to donate money at the end of the study.

Watch Marlone Henderson, assistant professor of psychology, discussing the many factors that motivate people to give in this Knowledge Matters video.

Variations of the programs included volunteers helping children in various countries or assisting children in their respective countries. After viewing the programs’ websites, which included photos of volunteers with the children, the participants reported an increased interest in contributing to the programs helping children overseas.

“One of my favorite examples is a line from ‘Batman Begins’ when Bruce Wayne says, ‘People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy,'” Henderson said. “Although he’s talking about motivating himself to put on his bat outfit, the message is broader than that. We need something to shake us out of this apathy – and when we hear about something that’s different than what we’re used to, that motivates us to get involved and help.”

In another study, Henderson looked at how people decide to contribute to fund-raising campaigns. One of the most powerful factors that drives people to donate, he says, is the amount of money the campaign has already raised.

An image from Henderson’s study showing a fictitious student volunteer program involving Chinese students helping children in Beijing.

When soliciting donations, charitable organizations need to consider how much their constituants care about the cause. If they’re reaching out to people who already care, it’s important to emphasize what needs to be done to accomplish a goal, Henderson said.
In a series of studies of 1462 participants, Henderson and his team manipulated audience identification by describing the beneficiaries of a shared goal in distancing terms such as “they” or “them” or in close terms such as “we” and “us.” After the respondents were informed of how much money was still needed for a cause they cared about, donations almost doubled.

“When people hear about how much more is needed they’re more compelled to jump in and get involved, so this effort they care about doesn’t sink,” Henderson said.
However, he advises fundraisers to do the opposite when targeting those who aren’t particularly invested in the cause.

“The best way to motivate new people is to point out what others have done,” Henderson said. “When people see that a charity has already raised a good chunk of money – they’re likely to say, ‘Wow – people really care about this! Maybe I should care too.'”
To measure the effectiveness of this strategy, the researchers drafted a letter citing the success of a fundraising campaign. They found the donations more than tripled after the respondents, who didn’t identify with the cause, read the letter.

So what does this mean for civic groups, nonprofits and charitable organizations hoping to increase donations? Henderson said he hopes insights from his studies will help fundraisers craft better campaigns and tug at the heartstrings with greater precision. By showing examples of people demonstrating altruistic acts in foreign countries, or communicating a sense of urgency with their constituents, they can significantly expand their circle of potential donors.

Why study generosity?

Aside from philanthropic groups rallying for donors, what can be gained from these studies? For Paxton, the importance of this area of research is learning how to make the world work a little bit better.

“Social scientists often focus on social problems,” Paxton said. “But it’s nice for me to come in to work and focus on a social good. Personally, I enjoy this research because if we can increase a social good, it could potentially help a number of social problems at once.”
To help a new generation of generosity scholars learn about the broad causes of generosity around the world, Paxton is teaching a freshman signature course in the School of Undergraduate Studies during the 2012-13 academic year. Using a $100,000 gift, provided to the university by an anonymous foundation, students will decide how to allocate the money to a charitable organization of their choice. Since the challenge will be to decide where to give the money, Paxton will teach techniques to evaluate the effectiveness of charitable programming.

“This class has the potential to change their lives,” Paxton said. “It’s going to make students think about philanthropy at an early age. And they have the opportunity through this class to give a substantial amount of money to a good cause.”
From donating a sizable gift to a struggling nonprofit to dropping off a couple of soup cans at a food drive, any act of good will contributes to a well-functioning society. And people need to realize they don’t have to wait until the holidays to start giving back.
“During this time of year people are put on waiting lists to help out at soup kitchens,” Paxton said. “It’s great that philanthropy is pronounced during the holidays, but volunteering and giving is needed all year long.”

Courtesy of Jessica Sinn, College of Liberal Arts

Rave reviews for “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides?”

Early reviews for Dr. Sheldon Ekland-Olson’s new book: “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides?” are in and are effusive in their praise for this important study of issues surrounding Life and Death. Abortion, assisted suicide, capital punishment and others are among the most contentious in many societies. Whose rights are protected? How do these rights and protections change over time and who makes those decisions? Based on the author’s award-winning and hugely popular undergraduate courses at the University of Texas, the book explores these questions and the fundamentally sociological processes which underlie the quest for morality and justice in human societies. Dr. Ekland-Olson’s goal is not to advocate any particular moral “high ground” but to shed light on the social movements and social processes which are at the root of these seemingly personal moral questions.

One Amazon.com reviewer calls it a “tour de force, one of the most interesting and thought provoking books he has ever read.” Another was brought to tears by the story of one father’s struggle with the decision to allow his 7 year old child to die. All mention the meticulous breadth and depth of the research, the non-judgmental tone and accessibility of the material. While Sheldon is a teacher’s teacher, his friends and colleagues know that despite his many titles and awards, he remains a happy mortal among men, inspiring not just respect but our profound appreciation.

Dr. Sheldon Ekland-Olson is the Audre and Bernard Centennial Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, where he served as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Executive Vice President and Provost. He is the winner of numerous teaching awards, and one of his classes was listed among the 2009 10 Hottest Courses in the Nation. His previous publications include The Rope, The Chair and the Needle, Texas Prisons, and Justice Under Pressure.

Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster, Fall 2011

Maggie Tate on Race and Ethnicity presentations by Lady Adjepong and Kate Averett

On Friday, December 2nd, the Sociology department’s Race and Ethnicity research cluster met for the final discussion of the semester.  Lady Adjepong, a first year student and Kate Averett, in her second year, presented papers in progress as part of the group’s goal to create a space where students can work through theoretical ideas about race and how race intersects with gender, sexuality, and class.  Lady Adjepong’s paper, “Black Female Masculinities,” grappled with the way black women who perform masculinity fit into discourses of gender and gender non-conformity.  Adjepong is critical of previous research on female masculinities that describes a return to masculinity as male bodied.  Because cultural stereotypes already align black women as closer to masculinity and thus further from femininity than white women, discussions of black female masculinity tend to reify traditional norms regarding racialized notions of beauty and gender.

Kate Averett’s paper, “The Anxious Public: Disruptive Bodies, Troubled Spaces, and Anxious Response,” discussed the anxious public response that followed Bobby Montoya’s wish to join the Girl Scouts of Colorado.  Bobby, a seven year old whose assigned sex was boy but who identifies socially as a girl, was denied entry into the Girl Scout program in the fall of 2011 because he “had boy parts.”  Averett analyzed news websites that reported the story, as well as the comments that were posted in response to the news reports and found a pattern of sensationalism in the reporting and gender anxiety on the side of the public.  Averett argued that because spaces coincide with a somatic norm, when bodies that don’t fit that norm attempt to inhabit those spaces, the response is characterized by anxiety and terror.  The co-construction of bodies and spaces maintains the masculinity/femininity binary, and disruptions to the boundary threaten to destabilize the identities of individuals.  But more than this, Averett argues, the Girl Scouts’ historical role in shoring up American values means that the separation of the sexes/genders is part of the construction of a national identity. Thus, individual gender anxieties become national gender anxieties.  Questions for further discussion to Adjepong’s paper include how we can theorize gender presentations without returning to traits or characteristics embedded in the body, and how Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech might inform contemporary discussions of the intersection of race and gender.  Questions for further discussion to Averett’s paper include to what extent “strange” bodies in spaces are required to construct somatic norms, how much anxiety around identity and Girl Scouts is a future oriented fear, and how Bobby Montoya’s racial identity contributes to the anxiety her presence produces.

Happy Holidays from UT Austin Sociology

It’s always a pleasure to enjoy kicking off the holidays at the historic Littlefield Home. As we bring the semester to a close, celebrating our community of friends and colleagues, it’s good to take time to refresh and look forward to a new semester of challenges and good cheer. View a movie of our: 2012 Holiday Party. Season’s Greetings to one and all from the Sociology Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

Intersections: Women’s and Gender Studies in Review Across Disciplines call for submissions

Intersections: Women’s and Gender Studies in Review Across Disciplines has just published its ninth issue. Earlier this month, four current editorial staff members, Amy Lodge, Michelle Mott, Vivian Shaw, and Maggie Tate, hosted a round table discussion about working on an interdisciplinary journal. At the round table, the editors discussed the process for crafting an interdisciplinary call for papers, the procedure for producing the journal from the call for papers to the publication, and the move from a print journal to a web-based journal.

Intersections was founded in 2002 by graduate students in the English Department and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies. Over the last several years, a number of Sociology graduate students have served as editorial staff members, contributors, and peer-reviewers. The current staff also consists of graduate students from the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, Radio-Television-Film, American Studies, and African and African Diaspora Studies. As Amy, Michelle, Vivian, and Maggie walked us through the CFP for Issue 9: Gender and Social Justice and for the current CFP for Issue 10: Media(ting) Genders and Sexualities: Identity, Representation, and Politics in Media, they discussed how the editorial board works to find language that is broad enough to attract a wide array of submissions, but is specific enough to articulate a general theme. Choosing key terms that both reflect the editorial board’s interests and speak across many disciplines (recognizing that certain terms take on different meanings within various scholarly fields) is very challenging.

The current issue and last two issues are available in print copy (at no cost). You can obtain a copy by emailing: intersections.journal@gmail.com. In addition, the current issue is available to view online at: http://intersections.utexas.org. The Intersections Editorial Board are accepting submissions for article abstracts, book reviews, and creative submissions until December 1, 2011. See Call for Papers below for details:

CFP: Media(ting) Genders and Sexualities: Identity, Representation, and Politics in Media
Intersections: Women’s and Gender Studies in Review Across Disciplines is an interdisciplinary graduate student publication welcoming work from current graduate students. We are committed to the interdisciplinary research of women’s and gender issues and are affiliated with the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

The journal encourages scholars in all fields to contribute scholarly essays, book reviews, and creative writing relating to this issue’s theme, Media(ting) Genders and Sexualities: Identity, Representation, and Politics in Media. We expect that this theme will inspire submissions that put gender and sexuality in conversation with intersecting identities of race, economic class, disability, nationality, and indigeneity, and encourage submissions on all forms of media.
Submissions might address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

● Representations of gender, sexuality, and race
● Property, authorship, and expression in local and transnational contexts
● Queering media
● Space and the body in media
● Social media and popular culture

The deadline for 200 – 300 word abstracts is December 1, 2011. We use a digital Open Journal System for submissions. To submit your abstract, please make an account on our website: intersections.utexas.org. You will be able to track your submission through your account. Questions should be sent to editors at intersections.journal@gmail.com
Completed papers and artwork are due by February 1, 2012. All submissions should include the author’s name, institution and department, contact information, title of submission, and word count. Scholarly essays and creative writing should be less than 5000 words.  For book reviews, please email intersections.journal@gmail.com for a list of possible titles. Book reviews should be between 750 –1250 words and include publication information about books reviewed.

Screw the Models: A Talk on Data Dilemmas with Professor Alex Weinreb

Last week on Wednesday, 9 November, Professor Alex Weinreb gave a fascinating talk to an audience of graduate students and professors from the Department of Sociology here at UT Austin.

Professor Weinreb’s talk, entitled “Screw the Models, get back to the data: Or, on the disciplinary dangers of data ex nihilo” comes out of research he has been doing for his current book project on the mis-measurement of society.

The basic premise of Weinreb’s talk, which has potentially earth-shattering implications for the positivistic social sciences, is that there are manifold errors at the basic level of data collection, particularly in the third world, which may lead to mistaken results in quantitative studies that rely on survey-based research.

Weinreb contends that the past four or five decades of quantitative research have witnessed an impressive growth in the complexity of statistical modeling techniques, and in particular post-facto techniques for “data cleaning” that attempt to fix problems in survey data prior to analysis. Yet, since the 1950s, there has been little social science research aimed at assessing survey errors in the third world and finding better ways to get more accurate data.

He gave several shocking examples of how survey research has missed big conclusions due to data issues, despite fancy models. First, heavy-weight demographers in the 1980s completely missed the process of African fertility transitions, which was happening as they wrote, because their data were not adequate to the task they proposed. Second, a multi-million dollar cross-national survey of several Asian countries in the 1990s was unable to find any significant results regarding women’s autonomy, which contrary to theoretical assumptions seemed to be greater in patrilineal and patriarchal areas than in others.

In sum, whether social scientists miss something big, or are looking for something big and can’t measure it, the answers to both of these errors lie in the data, rather than in more complex models. And the essence of these errors lie in “non-sampling error”. In other words, even where sampling is perfectly random, or adjusted with appropriate weights, a number of other errors continue to creep into datasets. The shocking thing is that non-sampling error accounts for the majority of variance in most data.

Some types of errors that are commonly seen in third world surveys include variations in results due to translation issues, insider-outsider dynamics, male-female interviewer-interviewee dynamics, and privacy issues (whether or not a third party is present during the interview).  Some of Weinreb’s recent work in the Dominican Republic has shown the variation in results when interviewers know the respondent personally, are an unknown community insider, or are an outsider to the community. In one illustrative example, respondents were much more likely to falsely claim to know a fictitious person among a list of real personnages when interviewed by an outsider, something Anthropologists and ethnographers call “sucker bias.” But the problem is that the directionality of any such bias is not consistent. On one set of questions respondents may be more likely to give accurate answers to outsiders than insiders (or to men rather than women), and vice versa for another set. And in another country or part of the same country, or even among different gender and age groups, this situation may be completely different.

There are clearly no easy solutions for these data dilemmas. But further research into data collection methods is one key to improving results. Although there have been advances in data collection methods in the developed world, with regards to the third world, this type of research has stalled since the 1950s and 1960s after World Fertility Surveys in the 1970s, and later Demographic & Health Surveys from the 1980s until today became the nearly universal gold standard for survey research. Having one such standard method for survey research does have the benefit of comparability across place and time. However, it seems to have serious problems of accuracy since it does not get the best results in all contexts. In other words, the current position of the social science academy is to privilege reliability of data over validity for a number of reasons, including comparability and tradition.

Following his talk, a number of graduate students and professors engaged in a lively discussion with Weinreb, parsing out the details of some of his broader brush strokes, and debating the pro and contra of some of his hypotheses. Department Chair and Professor Christine Williams pointed out that many of these data dilemmas were critiques often leveled by qualitative researchers at quantitative research in general, but noted that it was important to see this type of nuanced discussion from within a quantitative framework, since it is essential to always improve all of our research methods. Professor Pam Paxton, alluded to the conversation from the week before at the brown bag presentations of graduate students Amanda Stevenson and Isaac Sasson, pointing out that there are a number of solutions to data problems, even issues of non-sampling error, if researchers take the time to thoroughly diagnose problems and deal with them. She also pointed out that there is an accountability mechanism built into this type of survey research in the form of policies and programs, which are often informed by such social science research and ultimately prove successful or unsuccessful.

Isaac Sasson turned the discussion toward the future of the field and wondered aloud about how these ideas affect the big picture of the knowledge of structure and the structure of knowledge. And graduate student Marcos Perez ruminated about interdisciplinary linkages and the ways in which some of these issues could be solved through collaboration with colleagues in other departments.

Although we don’t yet have the answers to a number of these questions, Professor Weinreb’s work did shed some light on the problems of data assumptions ex nihilo (out of nothing), which ignore non-sampling error. Given the entrenched nature of quantitative research traditions, this is likely to be but a quiet revolution in the social sciences in the immediate future, but a revolution nonetheless, and one to keep our eyes on.

Letisha Brown wins Outstanding Paper Award at NASSS

Graduate student Letisha Brown received the Barbara A. Brown Outstanding Student Paper Award in the master’s students section of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, for her paper “The Spectacle of Blackness: Race, Representation and the Black Female Athlete.”

The NASSS annual conference titled “Revolutionary Sporting Bodies: Technologies in Practice” this year took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Papers winning the award are typically published in the flagship journal of NASSS, the Sociology of Sport Journal, and many former winners have gone on to become leading figures in the sociology of sport.

Kudos to Letisha!

Addenda errata, or, Toward a sociology without society

In ‘What’s in an Error? A Lévy Walk from Astronomy to the Social Sciences’ Isaac talked about how it was really error, or more precisely, the idea and observation that errors in natural scientific experiments and measurements seem to exhibit certain repeatable properties, or laws, that formed the foundation of the study of probability and statistics. Only against a background of noise, variance and aberrations was a concept of normal (eg average man), as well as the idea of truth as non-error, able to emerge and take shape. Versions of these concepts remain central to the social sciences from the 18th century to this day.

Alex Weinreb brought up the point that the rise of statistics and its incorporation into social studies were coeval with the relative geographic immobility of people in the 18th century. What struck me was how much statistical sociology is tied to criminology since its inception. Adolphe Quetelet, the founder of statistical sociology, was a criminologist and used his method primarily to study crime causation. Even the Lévy walk was a mathematical concept, I believe, first developed out of practical application to track down prison escapees within certain calculated perimeters. Given its strong ties to Staatswissenschaft, the emergence of social statistics seems to go hand in hand with that of governance and social control, policy and police–hence the centrality of the normal-pathological distinction.

Nonetheless, the historical contingency of something doesn’t necessarily invalidate its internal consistency. Statistics does describe something, and presents reality, at least in part, in certain ways. Amanda’s presentation outlined some of these principles or consistencies and addressed the utilities and limitations, risks and yields, of a number of statistical models (eg instrumental variables). Alex pointed out that current multilevel nonlinear social statistical models even seem to vindicate many previous, non-statistics-based sociological observations. The underlying assumption in the debate on merits of statistics-based sociology versus those of non-statistics-based sociology is interesting, in that proponents typically put forth that what can’t be empirically verified can’t be included as true, while opponents counter what’s true often lies beyond empirical verification itself. The positions perhaps are not so contradictory as they seem, for there is a supposition common to both, and that is, large-scale phenomena are necessarily somehow more complex than small-scale phenomena (if the distinction of large and small even holds). Here, the statistician’s or (for the lack of a better term) ‘positive sociologist’s’ role becomes merely one of delimitation, whereas that of the ‘critical sociologist’ becomes one of extension of epistemic scope. Expansion and edification are not mutually exclusive.

Perhaps it is this very assumption that needs questioning. Is it really easier to predict the motion of a cell or atom than it is to predict how someone or group will behave? Physics has shown us that the opposite can actually be the case. Large-scale phenomena, as such, are to a far extent stable and relatively easily predictable; it’s when we get down to the micro- and nano-levels of reality that laws collapse and things become very uncertain. Light may be both particle and wave, and yet this keyboard on which I’m typing, I’m fairly certain, won’t suddenly turn into a dove and fly away.

Sociologist Jean Baudrillard once said that knowledge is a high-definition screen onto which the low-definition image that is reality is projected. What may this mean for the sociological apparatus? How may the relation between theory and evidence, knowledge and object, itself be re-conceived within the field? Amidst such questions, Isaac’s and Amanda’s talks remind us of a level of reflexivity that is both essential and useful to the practice and imagination of sociology.

Graduate Sociology Blog