who owns sociology?
Market Veteran wrote the following comment yesterday:
For example, there are virtually no hiring committees advertising for cultural sociology, despite it being apparently the largest section of ASA. By contrast, there are a tremendous number of jobs advertising for expertise in criminology, quantitative methods, health, etc. The reason is clear: because those tend to be popular majors and have wide availability of external funding.
So, who exactly owns sociology?
- The senior faculty. They control the journals and the tenure committees. They like reproducing themselves.
- The junior faculty. They are trying to impress the senior faculty.
- The graduate students. They are hatching tomorrow’s sociology.
- The undergraduates. They want social problems and criminology.
- Deans. They want interdisciplinary work because it sounds cools and gets you grant money.
- The funders. They want to end poverty.
- The professional schools. They already own some chunks of sociology, like orgtheory.
Currently, I think the balance of power is probably #1 and #3. Higher ranked programs tend to do as they will, which usually means hiring people that senior people think will be “hot” in the future. At most other programs, your budget depends on enrollments, and few programs are willing to be less popular by teaching non-social problems/crim.
Adverts: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the question, but sociology seems to me to be clearly “owned” by the funders, which is to say, research foundations (many of which are private). It doesn’t have to be that way. Sociology could be run mainly on university budgets, which would make it freer but much less influential and much less wealthy.
I never miss an opportunity to promote William Bottom’s analysis of the invention of “the research based model”, which is essentially the story of how the funders invented modern sociology (while at the same time inventing modern business education … though I’m sure there are people who will think I’m overplaying the influence of the latter on the former – i.e, point 7 above), and certainly took ownership of field.
Here’s a PDF of his paper:
http://apps.olin.wustl.edu/workingpapers/pdf/2010-11-002.pdf
Perhaps you’re being ironic, but I see little to suggest that the funders “want to end poverty”. As Bottom argues, the primary reason for social science is to ensure an “organization of intelligence”, a workable uniformity of thought on social issues. (It may at first appear ironic but it is ultimately understandable that this uniformity is pursued by promoting multi-disciplinarity.) I don’t how many sociologists will admit it, but I think research agendas are strongly guided by those who fund research. (And it seems to me to be sort of obvious that this would be the case.)
The argument that enrollment also directs the course sociology is of course importantly right. But this is because the owners (the foundations) are selling uniformity of thought (about crime and social problems) to their customers (the employers of the minds shaped in undergraduate programs).
Compare the question: who owns journalism? Surely not the public that consumes it. But the major corporations who run the media and use it to advertise their wares. I.e., the funders.
Thomas
February 29, 2012 at 9:52 am
I’m confused by @MarketVeteran’s suggestion that the lack of job advertisements within culture is partially a function of differences from “popular majors.” Does MV mean to suggest that culture course enrollments are lower than in other topical areas? We should look at some data to sort that out, but my instinct is different–more than once, I’ve had 200+ students enroll for a culture seminar capped at 15. That’s just ancedata, but you can see why I’m curious about the intended meaning.
Jenn Lena
February 29, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Why is this a question of “ownership?” Like any discipline or profession, sociology is “owned” by its duly-certified/recognized members. This does not imply that the discipline can ignore the demands of funders, deans, or undergrads. Market Veteran’s comment seems to acknowledge as much, arguing that grad students should attend to market signals – what the preponderance of job ads are requesting – in crafting a professional identity. This kind of advice can be taken too far, but what is the alternative? If, for example, you are a young “cultural sociologist” who is doing work on a topic that intersects with orgs, you should know the orgs literature…or risk appearing the fool. If you know the orgs literature, then, yes, you can teach an undergrad orgs class, in addition to your senior seminar on the cultural tool-kit of parking enforcement officers in St. John’s Newfoundland. This is just common sense (and a basic scientific norm), not a question of ownership.
Lisa
February 29, 2012 at 1:33 pm
I realize that @MarketVeteran was making a broader point about agenda setting in sociology, but I would argue that his specific example of hiring in cultural sociology is rather misleading. It’s true that few job openings directly target cultural sociologists, but if you look at the record of recent hires, a substantial number of people who got jobs–typically through open calls–identify themselves as doing research in and teaching cultural sociology. Furthermore, cultural sociology has become so pervasive in recent years that many of those whose primary interests are in other sought-after subfields (e.g., economic sociology, organizations, inequality, etc.) also rely heavily on cultural explanations in their work. I mention this because I would hate for graduate students planning their research agendas to dismiss cultural sociology as a fruitful research orientation in favor of, say, criminology (which, by the way, is unlikely to get you a job in a top department–unless it’s combined with interests in other subfields).
BartB
February 29, 2012 at 1:50 pm
I think BartB is right that cultural sociologists, as well as sociologists of gender/sexuality, often bridge subfields and do sometimes hired in open searches or even other areas (political soc, international/globalization, health, etc.). However, after following the job market for the last few years, I do agree that there is something of a mismatch between hiring and the classes undergrads are interested in taking. In my experience, as others have mentioned, classes on culture, gender, sexuality, race, and health are extremely popular with undergrads. Yet these are often not the hiring priorities of senior faculty. I’m actually not sure why undergrad interests are not the driving force, at least at public universities, which are increasingly dependent on tuition rather than state funding. And compared to fields like psychology, research funding is less of a factor in sociology, as the grants we get are generally quite small.
bedhaya
February 29, 2012 at 3:32 pm
To clarify my meaning to Jenn Lena and BartB:
I do not want to imply that courses in cultural sociology would be unpopular nor that it is not worthwhile to do cultural sociology. Clearly, neither of those things are true. As a cultural sociologist myself, I can relate to both observations. My point was solely intended as an observation on market demand.
Sure, there are open positions, and they are open to cultural sociologists. But they are open to everyone else, too. From a purely mathematical point of view, the few who get those positions are pretty lucky. When you are competing with 200 or more other applicants, being in the 98th percentile isn’t good enough–because the 4th best candidate often suffers the same fate as the bottom 98%–no job, no interview, sometimes no phone interview.
The real practical limitations to finding success in career come with the restricted positions–by which I mean positions that advertise for a specific expertise. Yes, some of those specific job ads are statements of preference rather than statements of exclusion. But given one’s competition with dozens of outstanding candidates who are likely to fulfill that preference, the practical outcome is the same. So the pool of jobs that someone like a cultural sociologist is likely to have available to them is much smaller than the pool of jobs that someone who identifies as an expert in race, health, stratification, etc.
To the question of what students want, it’s what hiring committees think students want that matters. As the late Richard Peterson might have put it, it’s what the suppliers of cultural objects (in this case, faculty) THINK the audience (students) wants, rather than what they actually want, that shapes cultural production. Of course, students want to take classes about culture, media, etc. That sounds exciting to a lot of college students. But they must also confront the realities of academia:
For most colleges and universities, cultural sociology is a luxury that they can’t afford. Yes, R1s, places with large sociology departments, and a handful of wealthy, elite liberal arts colleges can afford to provide courses and expertise in this area. But most liberal arts colleges have four or fewer sociology faculty, and most of those departments wouldn’t place cultural sociology at the core of what their curriculum (whether or not they should is a different question). At other small schools and regional public universities, students are more likely to look for majors with clear career training and advancement; so they may be more likely to choose something like criminology because of its perceived practical benefits.
So again, in terms of sheer numbers, the demand side of the job market is stacked against candidates who offer areas of expertise that are not in high demand–for whatever reason, however flawed, unjust, inaccurate that reason may be. I’m not saying don’t do cultural sociology, or don’t offer a cultural sociology class once you’re hired. But you’ve got to diversify your portfolio and appeal to the demand if you ever want to get to the point where you actually CAN teach a cultural sociology class.
Market Veteran
February 29, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Thomas, I think your reference to journalists and the question “Who owns journalism?” is an interesting comparison. Funders rarely care about day-to-day coverage decisions, as long as viewers/readers keep coming in and there’s no major controversy. Most news organizations are too large to micromanage anyway. As a result, news organizations largely try to cater to their audience, although they increasingly target specific niches. Catering to the audience is hard though, since working journalists tend to have a poor understanding of their audience. In the end, working journalists follow their own professional preferences. Signals from other parties are often vague and/or ambiguous. If the corporate bosses say “raise ratings or else,” there is no magic formula for how to raise ratings.
Faculty hiring seems to suffer from a similar kind of goal ambiguity. If the committee is told to “hire the best sociologist,” there are a lot of qualified candidates. Fabio suggests many ways of assessing how candidates fit the department’s goals, but how much can a hiring committee know about things like undergraduates’ preferences? Departments may have good data, but it could be as ambiguous as figuring out what raises TV ratings. I could see a lot of reasons why hiring committees would be interested in reproducing themselves.
As someone on the market myself, it seems like many narrow grad students are having difficulty on the job market. (Like Market Veteran, one of my main areas is cultural sociology.) One of the advantages of sociology as a discipline is that our areas of interest are not as mutually exclusive as other disciplines. In English departments, someone who specializes in medieval literature can’t specialize in modern literature too. In sociology, it’s much easier to specialize in cultural sociology and quantitative methods, or culture and race, or culture and fill in the blank. Personally, I think versatility should be embraced, but I know that may be a minority opinion.
Noah
February 29, 2012 at 9:46 pm
These are all good points, Market Veteran, and ones I largely agree with. I think the distinction between open and targeted searches is particularly important here. You’re right that very few departments have carried out targeted culture searches, which means that graduate students working on culture have to compete with everyone else for the open spots (or apply for targeted searches in other areas when possible). My point was simply that they have been quite successful in doing so, which in turn suggests that there is in fact a demand for cultural sociology among many departments. It’s true that many of the successful candidates have specialized in multiple subfields, but I see that as a good thing for both cultural sociology and the discipline as a whole.
Of course, your argument about targeted searches is still quite valid. A greater number of dedicated culture positions would (barring multiple failed searches) guarantee that at least a few cultural sociologists would land jobs every year. Right now, no such guarantee exists. What’s less clear to me, however, is how the current opportunity structure affects the employment outcomes for cultural sociologists on balance — is the probability of securing an tenure-track position lower for a graduate student working on culture than for students specializing in other subfields? I’m not sure, but my sense is that at least in the top tier of the market, the answer is no.
In any case, the focus of Fabio’s original post was about something other than the career prospects of cultural sociologists, so I’ll stop hijacking this thread.
BartB
March 1, 2012 at 1:10 am
http://www.soc.iastate.edu/sapp/soc591ferrales.pdf
Would just like reiterate Lisa’s point that no one really owns it. The job market is inertial because (on average) professors reward people who think the way they want them to think, which is in turn, based in part on the way their professors’ wanted them to think, and so on. Any structural change to accommodate a large shift in graduate student research preferences is going to take a long time for this reason. Graduate students can rebel against the machine, or might even be enabled to dictate terms for their research by friendly advisers without realizing there is a smaller audience for their work outside of their cohort. This is a failing strategy for the reasons alluded to by others.
While no one really owns the discipline, professors are the ones who have the authority to change the reward structure – so while they are constrained by their training, they have the agency to make incremental changes regarding where the discipline is going by determining grad student acceptances, hires, tenure appointments, section awards, paper outcomes, etc. As long as they do this based on how people think (in line with foundational sociological insights), I feel like the discipline will be fine. However, I worry about fragmentation and clique reproduction, which limits the dynamism of the profession in terms of what topics can be studied, as well as our relevance to external audiences. Noah brings up the point that there is a lot more room for versatility in sociology than in other fields (across sub-fields). While true in theory, I don’t see that playing out so much in terms of how people interact in the discipline, where they publish, who gets hired, etc. From my limited view, the discipline seems to be more governed by fragmented voting blocs than a shared understanding of what is ‘good’ sociology, perhaps because it’s easy to lose track of what those core insights are in the course of producing specialized/routinized empirical research. That is certainly the case for me anyway.
Craig
March 1, 2012 at 2:04 am