Fri, 21 Oct 1994 17:41:38 -0700 for Date: Fri, 21 Oct 94 19:59:29 EDT From: Lisa Eargle Subject: What's Wrong With Sociology To: SOCGRAD@UCSD.EDU Regarding an earlier post made by Lichter on Davis and Molotoch....You'd think after 2 weeks I 'd have them read, but.. I haven't. I agree with what Lichter said, but just wanted to add my thoughts. I'd heard fellow sociologists criticize us for the diversity -- different topics, different approaches -- found in sociology. But, like someone pointed out a few days ago (Michael?) that each approach taken alone misses or leaves out something. So, different ways of doing Sociology -- phenomen- ology, structuralism, etc. -- gives us different angles on the same topics, and hopefully leading us to a better understanding of society and its parts. Diversity of topics and approaches is one of the things I found (still find) attractive about our discipline. Just because I'm a Sociologist doesn't mean I must study mobility tables (like O.D. Duncan and Peter Blau) or do community studies like the old Chicago School. I can study pretty much anything about society that I want, using which ever theories and research methods I feel is appropriate. And, why would we want to keep studying the same issues using the same methods over and over? Are we going to fully understand society doing that? I doubt it. It sounds like to me "Worship us sociologists of the 50s/60s and be our puppets" is Davis' motto. also, if our work is not pioneering as some of the old studies (remember, it was easy to do something pioneering long ago. Sociology was still in its infancy), is it garbage and we should only do research that is major ground breakers? Then somebody better change the rules of tenure and give me a hefty research grant so I can go do something radically new for my career. And, oh yes, they should go ahead and give me my PhD, because it'll take me to long to do my dissertation. Get real. Second, sociologists are listening to other fields and other fields are finally listening to us. For example, during the late 1980s (around '88) Ivar Berg and Arne Kalleberg and Paula England and George Farkas edited books examining labor markets, industries, occupations, and earnings. These books contained chapters written by sociologists and by economists. Also, those of us studying earnings/wage determination incorporate in our models variables used in Human Capital theory (developed by Gary Becker, economist), Dual Economy/Dual Labor markets (developed both by economists and sociologists) -- just to name a few. So, I find anyone asserting that no interaction between fields is going on --must have been keeping their eyes and ears shut for the past 20 years. Besides, why should only sociologists listen to other fields? It should go both ways. We have something to offer to other fields also. What I do think we need to do a better job at is asserting what our research contributes to the understanding of social phenomena --beyond that of common sense. We need to assert this to other disciplines and to the public. Those outside of sociology really have no idea what we do and what we're about. They think we're a 10 second sound bite on the nightly news. One way of doing is showing how our work applies to economic, political, and social policy. ---Lisa