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To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
From: Douglas Sadao Aoki / Lucy De Fabrizio <stumpy@mail.unixg.ubc.ca>
Subject: Re: Areas of interest/prestige
Message-Id: <E0wgK4j-0006XZ-00@mail.unixg.ubc.ca>
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 18:07:18 -0700
At 06:34 PM 6/23/97 -0400, Dan Ryan wrote:

>Although professional turf protection would never let them admit it, the
>fact that all these genres are trying to do sociology strikes me as the
>ultimate vindication of the sociological project.  

Agreed. It's just that, if the relative prestige of sociology is low, then
these other genres are saying that contemporary sociology isn't doing that
project very well.

I'm not arguing that sociology is inferior; I'm just claiming that it has
low prestige. Of course, prestige is not a good measure of worth, although
there are powerful and material effects to lacking prestige. However, I'd be
happy to be proven wrong in my claim, especially because we share the same
chosen profession. Is sociology a highly respected department in your
university? Do your friends in English get excited about current
sociologists? Is sociology widely acknowledged to be the place to go if you
want to do social theory? It's these type of questions that get negative
responses, in my limited experience.

>Perhaps we should be a little bit sociological here: these folks are
>probably dismissive of most disciplines other than their own.

Actually, no. This is not a matter of simple parochialism. English and
literary studies have repeatedly raided/appropriated/colonized other fields,
because they appreciate (some of) what is happening in anthropology,
psychology, political science, biology, physics, etc. Current sociology
doesn't seem to command the same respect--although, admittedly, Marx and
Weber and some others do.

------------------------------------

Doug Aoki
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC
CANADA

stumpy@unixg.ubc.ca