Date:         Sun, 11 May 97 18:12:09 EDT
From: Alan <DAVIDSON@UCONNVM.UCONN.EDU>
Subject:      "Ideology"
To: socgrad@CSF.COLORADO.EDU
Message-Id:   <970511.182144.EDT.DAVIDSON@UConnVM.UConn.Edu>
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I concur with the notion that folks shouldn't be afraid to confront
Professors with whom one has theoretical or methodological disputes
(then again, that might explain why I have been in graduate school
since 1986).  I do think that one reason for these sorts of disputes
lies in the fact that primarily for organizational reasons, graduate
training in sociology is based on learning "tools" by which to interrogate
social reality, the tools being primarily methodological with the student
being encouraged to root their research in whichever "paradigm" they know
something about in order to make it theoretical.  Graduate training, and
the entire professional gatekeeping process isn't designed to encourage
critical analysis about whether what we do and how we do it is actually
worth doing -- one positive of the PoMo critique in the late 1980's is
it attempted to force sociology to ask those questions (a critique which,
I concur with Danielle in suggesting was pretty much purposely ignored as
a "passing fad" here at UCONN).  Where the real danger lies for sociology
in all this is the dilemma of what happens when how we analyze the world
is radically at odds with how the folks we study analyze the world --
especially in terms of what is important to study and what is important
to ask?
if there