content analysis

Over the past several months, I have heard (both directly and indirectly) several stories of manuscripts coming back from journals with the judgment that they are methodological sound and very interesting, but just not sociological enough. This criticism annoys the hell out of me. First, disciplinary turf defending is an unproductive intellectual practice. We all will give lip service to the importance of the disciplines having an open discourse and exchanging our various ideas. However, too many scholars are eager to distinguish between what counts as sociology and what doesn’t. It’s especially ironic given that this kind of “othering” is exactly the sort of thing that we’re supposed to be mindful of (it puts me in mind of the Antinomian Controversy of 1636 described in Kai Erikson’s Wayward Puritans).

Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, I’m not sure it’s fair to be calling work unsociological when nobody freakin’ knows what sociology is. And I’m not talking about Aunt Mildred who always needs you to explain it at Thanksgiving dinner. I mean that most sociologists don’t have a common definition. I’ve been conducting an informal poll over the past few days, asking various sociologists how they define sociology or what sociological means. Invariably, the first answer was “I don’t know, man. Leave me alone.” However, upon reflection, I received several different answers:

“the study of social life, focusing on behavior and interactions”
“the empirical study of human institutions and relationships”
“the systematic study of social structure and its impact on the individual”
“the study of the ways human behavior is shaped by seen or unseen social forces”

My own definition would be that to think sociologically is to consider context when examining people and institutions. After asking, I shared with my respondents that I’ve always felt an anxiety when trying to distinguish between anthropology and sociology or political sociology and political science for students. Nearly all of them agreed that disciplinary boundaries are porous and drawing distinctions is silly. Nonetheless, if forced to distinguish, I usually say something like, “Anthropology is closely tied to qualitative methodologies and tends to focus on the culture of specific society (sometimes comparing several societies), whereas sociologists do whatever the hell we feel like.” Okay, maybe I don’t say that last part. But I more or less think it’s true. As The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology notes, a common criticism of sociology is that it is “a hybrid discipline that can never aspire to the status of a social science or a coherent body of knowledge.”

The ODS goes on to define sociology as having three purposes (I paraphrase loosely here): a) to analyze social structure and the relationships that result from it, b) to understand “meanings” or ways of cognitively organizing the world, and c) to understand social action or agency (essentially, how the individual can change stuff). However, given this broad definition – allowing for massive flexibility in methods, theory, subject of study — sociology can either be seen as the “queen of the social sciences” or as cannibalizing all of the others.

Since we, as sociologists, have grabbed such a large space as our potential intellectual playground and many of us see our diversity as a strength, can’t we all agree to cut it out with this “not sociological enough” B.S.? If a manuscript is methodologically sound, interesting, and tells us something about people or human institutions, shouldn’t that be good enough?

What do you think, reader(s)? When is distinguishing between sociology and not sociology useful?

I have to say, I’ve always been somewhat skeptical about the notion of culture as an independent variable. Like many sociologists, I tend to think primarily in terms of the structural forces that shape social behavior. For example, how race/class/gender shape life chances. However, a fair number of scholars working within sociology’s “cultural turn” are interested in the independent effect of culture. To be perfectly honest, such arguments often baffle me.

But last night I came upon a great example of how culture can affect behavior independent of structural factors. As one of the five American soccer fans, I was doing my part and watching ESPN2’s MLS Primetime Thursday, the one time per week when games from our national soccer league are shown on basic cable (several other games are shown on Fox Soccer Channel and Telefutura). The match-up was between the ever-disappointing New York Red Bulls and the red-hot Toronto FC. The game, played on a cold, windy, rainy night in Toronto, benefited from the enthusiasm of the wildly supportive and vocal fans, who sang and hurled streamers all night. A great description of the crowd by soccer writer, Ives Galarcep, is available here.

Toronto FC is an expansion team founded last season. Unlike American soccer clubs which have struggled to fill their stadiums at times, TFC has sold out of season tickets in both of their first two years. Nearly every game draws a wild capacity crowd. The only possible structural explanation for this disparity is that BMO Field is in downtown Toronto (or on its outskirts), unlike the other stadiums, which are usually hidden in the suburbs. Nonetheless, given the enthusiasm of the TFC fans, I’d guess they’d show up even in the suburbs.

It seems to me that the strong cultural imprint of British culture on Canadian culture has led to the huge base of fanatical Toronto fans. Many would be tempted to point to the fact that Toronto is a city of immigrants and, given that soccer is a global sport, the immigrant population might explain the high level of support. Of course, several other MLS cities have large immigrants populations: New York, LA, Houston, Dallas, among others (moreover, I saw mostly Anglo-Saxon faces in last night’s crowd). I’d guess that Canadian culture, more than American culture, (well, sporting culture at least) is derived from British and European sources. This cultural similarity leads to a greater understanding of and support for soccer among Canadians. This phenomenon seems to me a pretty good example of culture having an effect on behavior independent of structural forces.

Then again, there are well-armed forces that keep American crowds from acting too much like English supporters. Galarcep writes,

Seeing stadium security toss pass unrolled streamers to the crowd was amazing. Imagine seeing that at Giants Stadium. Not only would that not happen, if you tossed a streamer at a player at Giants Stadium you would get tackled by two state troopers as a state police dog mauled your leg.

I’ve always been uncomfortable being served by others. I simply can’t stand putting another person into a position of servitude. So, even when I’m standing at the Subway counter, I feel like saying, “Would you prefer if I just came back there and made the sandwich myself?” But that’s not how things work. To alleviate it this discomfort, I find myself asking people in service positions a lot of questions. The following conversation took place at a local Subway at around 8:30 pm the other night:

Me: So, what’s the most popular sub?
Counter Maven: Definitely the BMT [Editor's note: an Italian combo]
ME: Really? Is that true at all times of the day?
CM: Yeah, people always order pretty much the same things.
ME: Huh, I would’ve guessed that people liked cold sandwiches at lunch, but ordered hot sandwiches for dinner.
CM: Nah, if they want something toasted, they’ll probably get the Chicken Bacon Ranch.

I was reflecting on this encounter later and I was amazed by how quickly I sought to built a predictive model (good sociological training, eh?). Forget the more obvious question: “why is the BMT so popular?” I was trying to find the hidden variation. It called to mind a brief analogy I once read (I can’t for the life of me remember where): Let’s say a sociologist wanted to understand gravity. Rather than noting the remarkable and obvious fact that everything falls, a sociologist might take things of various weights — a barbell, a feather, a tennis ball — to a rooftop and try to measure differential patterns in the speed at which the items fell earthward.

Sudhir Venkatesh (Gang Leader for a Day) was on The Colbert Report last night. And, man, did he make sociology look bad.

SV: Poor people wouldn’t answer my questions.
SC: Poor people wouldn’t answer your questions? Did you try offering them money? Because I understand that’s something poor people need a lot of.
SV: I tried! But I didn’t give them enough and I gave them bad questions like, “How does it feel to be black and poor?”
SC: Really? But they were too “in it” to really get a sense of it?
SV: Well, yeah. But I gave them choices! “Very Bad, Bad, Good,” you know …
SC: Seriously? [riffed on the absurdity of offering multiple choices]
SV: Well, that’s what sociologists do.

Actually, not all sociologist use questions that ridiculous.  Or response categories that bad.  Not all sociologists use survey methods.

Many people have voiced their concerns with Venkatesh’s research.  But he did nothing in this public forum to mention that what he did was out of keeping with what most sociologists do.  Pretty annoying.  Colbert was good at pointing out several problems with the research though.

After staring at Stata’s horrifically ugly user interface for hours, I often develop an overwhelming sense of anomic meaninglessness. After all, no matter how advanced our methods are, no matter how many deliberately obfuscatory terms we put before the word “models,” no matter how good our datasets, ultimately, we’re just talking about correlations. Obviously, this point has been made unendingly. Some people find this point so damning as to quit the enterprise altogether. Others feel it’s true, but unimportant (“back to the multi-level models”). So, I’m either preaching to the choir or being quickly dismissed here.

What often gets lost in this debate are the dual questions of meaning and truth.  In the end, we are all guided by our a priori social sense.  If a finding is in line with what we know to be true about the world, then we keep the model we have.  If it doesn’t, you spend the next six weeks trying to figure out what’s need to make it sure it reflects your a priori expectations*.  When someone says something that is just clearly sociologically true, you can feel it.  A social truth is easily recognizable.  In the same way, a stretch of methods and assumptions to secure a finding is also apparent.  But only when something is really true — when the finding is durable across methods and datasets, when it’s so apparently genuine that we can drop our insecurities about our methods just being correlations — is our work really meaningful.  Of course, it’s hard as hell to find something palpably true to say that hasn’t been said already.

Okay, back to the hunt for meaning.

*Very occasionally we can be surprised by a finding that holds up.  Isn’t that rare though?

Yesterday, a friend sent me a link to a very funny blog called Stuff White People Like. Then, this morning, on under the apt title, “whiteness studies,” Jeremy Freese of scatterplot linked to soaring reviews of a gallon of milk on Amazon.com. All this thinking about white people made me consider an issue of ethics and pedagogy related to race.

At my institution, we have a much beloved instructor who teaches a somewhat “edgy” courses about race. He’s fond of blowing apart racial myths and exploring racial inequities in manner that students can easily relate to. He manages to push our largely white and conservative pool of students and still get the best teaching evaluations bar none. He’s cool; he gets it. Virtually every minority student at the institution takes his courses. He’s white, but much like Bill Clinton, he’s completely accepted by minority students.

Recently, he offered a new course exploring white culture restricted to only white students. He was able to get away with that stipulation by only admitting white students who had taken his race class and keeping it under the radar, not letting senior faculty, the chair, or any university officials know about it. Upon learning about this, two opposing thoughts occurred to me: a) how dare he impose a race restriction that return us to segregated classes?, and b) my God, just imagine how productive that class could be, if it gave white students a chance to honestly explore race.

To address point b first, the course covered the history of racism among whites, stereotypes of whites (and their functions), and tried to develop ways to have more equitable and honest multi-racial interactions. By all accounts, students left the course with a far more nuanced notion of race, greater sensitivity to non-whites, and a few became radicalized on the issue of race.

At the same time, to do this under the radar without approval from the department, the institution, or the community seems unethical. Moreover, regardless of whether the community would have consented, the entire notion of barring non-white students is unjust. And that’s to say nothing of how white was even defined for the purposes of admission to the class.

While there is much to be concerned with in this particular example, it does raise the broader question of how we can teach race to white students (and really get through to them!) without them feeling fearful of saying the wrong thing? How can we teach it in a context where white students quietly nod and jot down whatever the instructor says?

Clearly, not all institutions are the same. Some faculty maybe lucky enough to teach at a school rich with Lefty undergrads all too willing to approach race critically. But, perhaps, that situation makes it even more difficult to really challenge students’ thinking.

I’d be interested to hear my reader(s) comments. What do you think?

I have never been as hyped as many Communications scholars or bloggers about the democratic possibilities of The Internet. Like Cass Sunstein, I tend to think that The Internet encourages segmentation and therefore reduces the chance of “unanticipated encounters” and “common experiences.” Moreover, it seems that the primary model for blogs to have a big impact is to bring underreported stories to the attention of the mainstream press, thus further legitimatizing corporate media’s influence.

Nonetheless, I’ve watched recently as the so-called “socio-blogosphere” has grown substantially (see: Contexts Crawler). Even though it seems every second assistant professor has a blog these days, I’m somewhat concerned that too many of them serve as public diaries or discussions of trivial things (like frustrations with certain stats packages), rather than discussions of ideas. The gold standard for making a blog substantive and meaningful, while still personal has to be Chris Uggen, whose regular discussion of big social issues, frequent graphing, and lucid insights into the National Basketball Association are unbeatable. While I recognize that my above smack talk will compel me to live up to higher goals (if anybody reads this), I’m going to try my best and not let my commodity fetishism for the latest Mac take over.