Hidden jobs: Good news for sociologists

Applied sociology, if defined broadly enough, is a ray of light for sociology graduates in an otherwise dismal career landscape. This is particularly true in the Washington, D. C. metropolitan area. Sociologists’ general or liberal arts skills are as valuable, if not more valuable, than research specialization. Finding a job in government requires a different strategy than a job with a government contractor. Unfortunately, in neither case is there a rational path or match-up between a person’s skills and finding the job which utilizes these skills. Local knowledge can help in making the match. Edward Sabin, Ph.D., University of Michigan 1970, taught sociology for five years in the Midwest. Since 1974, he worked for 8 years as a writer/researcher under a number of government contracts in the area of international health. Currently he is a writer/systems analyst for a NASA library automation project.     

Encountering Microcomputers

Explored are the typical features of the experiences of first time, novice microcomputer users who are unfamiliar with basic computer equipment. Upon encountering a microcomputer for the first time such persons face a set of novel experiences including inadequate knowledge, altered sense of time, concerns about scarce capacity and dexterity, technological anxiety, and several other factors. Questions are raised about the consequences of encountering microcomputers among first time users in an effort to explicate the most important factors associated with successful accomodation. This analysis may provide helpful information for those engaged in computer training and staff development in the human services.     

Word processors for qualitative sociologists: A review essay

Summary and Conclusions To reiterate, we think word processors driven by microcomputers can be used effectively for processing notes, observations and other textual data collected through qualitative research methods and later for analyzing them. Of course, machines cannot analyze data, engender concepts, or write insightful prose. In fact, these machines can do nothing that humans do not instruct them to do. InAnalyzing Social Settings, John Lofland describes the overlap of observation and analysis in a project and suggests the use of a general file structure and mechanical procedures that can stimulate on-going analysis during observation (1971:118). Whatever the system one uses, if the interplay between what is observed and what is made sociologically meaningful can be less a clerical task, then so much the better. In sum, we think word-processing systems can help a sociologist electronically cut and paste raw text files and spur the researcher into producing superior files and reports.     

How applied research can save sociologists from themselves

In this paper I argue that the selection of appropriate statistical procedures is at best haphazard without a careful consideration of the consequences of one’s research, and that significant distortions often will result when applied concerns are ignored. I advance the hypothesis that typical conceptions of basic research in sociology preclude the proper use of statistics. From this it follows that mainstream, quantitative sociology can begin to save itself only by taking seriously the question of applications.     

Potential expansion of the academic job market: Opportunities for sociologists

Following a period of a restricted and declining academic market, an expansion of such opportunity for sociologists is forecast. The next decade will be characterized by increasing enrollments, particularly after 1995, and an increasing percentage of faculty currently employed within academia will pass the normal age of retirement. The “uncapping” of age of retirement is not expected to have a significant impact on the need to replace older faculty. Despite a decline in the production of Ph.D.’s during the 1980s, there continues to exist a significant pool of underutilized sociologists. The impact of this oversupply will depend upon more than the increase in demand within academic institutions. The number of sociologists employed outside academia increased during the 1980s, and this trend is expected to continue. Conclusions must remain tentative because of the severe limitations of available data, and additional data collection and analysis is suggested. Nevertheless, the next decade is seen as a time of expanding opportunities for sociologists, and the market for their service is seen as becoming increasingly competitive. He served as vice president for academic affairs and provost from 1980 to 1988. He is the immediate past vice president of the American Sociological Association.     

How should sociologists treat Becker'sTreatise on the Family?

Sociological Forum -     

Are minority women sociologists in double jeopardy?

We examine whether minority women in academic sociology face disadvantages that exceed those that would be expected by simply compounding the disadvantage of being a woman with that of being nonwhite or Hispanic. In a national survey of sociology departments, evidence of such “double jeopardy” appears in minority women’s severe underrepresentation among full professors, in both very small and very large departments, in undergraduate programs, in the Northeast, and in public institutions. Minority women are somewhat better represented among graduate students, but disadvantaged relative to minority men in their share of financial support. A pool of doctoral students now exists from which minority women faculty may be recruited, but these women appear to be leaving faculties faster than they are being replaced. His research interests include intergenerational family structure, social support across the life course, and U.S. antipoverty policy. He is currently collaborating on a longitudinal study of institutional predictors of the pace of affirmative action for women faculty in sociology. Her major research interest is in the area of work and personality. She is collaborating on a longitudinal study of women and minorities in U.S. sociology departments.     

Quebec sociology: agendas from society or from sociologists?

La plupart des questions sur lesquelles les sociologues québécois se sont penches au cours des dernières décennies se rapportent d'une facon ou d'une autre aux transformations qui ont eu lieu au cours de la ‘Révolution tranquille’. Les objets de leur recherche peuvent être regroupes sous trois chapitres: la modernization, le nationalisme, et l'égalité sociale. Le passage d'un ordre socio-culturel à un autre entraine des tensions et oppositions entre les groupes en place et ceux qui aspirent à un ordre different; entre groupes pronant des idéologies differentes. Les sociologues (et autres specialistes en sciences sociales) faisaient partie de groupes qui preconisaient certains types de changements. L'essai porte sur les facons dont les transformations sociales et l'implication des sociologues dans leur deroulement ont oriente la discipline - à la fois dans ce qui à constitue ses objets de recherche et dans ce qui à ete neglige. L'impact de ces phenomenes sur revolution de la profession est egalement examine. The work of Quebec sociologists during the last few decades has dealt with issues related to the transformation of society that has characterized the ‘Quiet Revolution’. The significant trends of research can be grouped under three categories of issues: those pertaining to modernization, nationalism, and social equality. The changes from one socio-cultural order to another has involved tensions and opposition between established and contending groups; between groups with different ideological orientations. Sociologists (and other social scientists) were part of groups advocating particular kinds of changes. This essay examines some of the ways in which the on-going social change and the involvement of sociologists in it has oriented the discipline - both in what has been researched and what has been neglected. Some observations are also made with regard to their impact on the evolution of the profession.     

Microcomputers in Social Work Education

Microcomputer use has increased dramatically in the last five years. Use of this technology has expanded rapidly in social work education, but less rapidly in clinical practice. Trends in educational and practice uses of this technology are explored along with the limitations of and myths about computers in education and practice. Educational curriculum issues are identified and an outline for planning computers as transient information or enduring knowledge are covered. Concerns about availability of equipment and supports are raised.     

The disintegration of tribal solidarity among American sociologists: Implications for knowledge accumulation

Conclusion Sociology in America scores low on all those organizational dimensions that produce cumulative knowledge. The ratio of skepticism to trust is high; the selection of facts is heavily influenced by the rituals of diverse tribes and ideological cults; the use of instrumentation to observe and report facts is limited; the consensus over valid facts is horizontal rather than hierarchical; the mutual monitoring of knowledge often degenerates into games of rhetoric or, if not rhetoric, to mutual ignorance about the knowledge claims of rival tribes; the barriers separating sociologists from the lay public are porous; and the necessary material, symbolic, cultural, and organizational resources needed to sustain the discipline are unstable and typically in short supply. This situation is tragic because most of the problems confronting humans are organizational in nature; and yet, the science of social organization is not a major player in policy decisions. Indeed, policy is influenced more by ideological and political rhetoric, or even worse, by disciplines such as economics which have an inadequate theory and psychology which has no theory of the structure and collectivity. This exclusion of sociology from important policy decisions is the result of the perceived failures of the discipline to cumulate knowledge and to possess knowledge that would be useful to clients.     

Microcomputers and the Individual Practitioner

This paper presents the findings of a literature review conducted from December 1983 to January 1984, exploring the microcomputer uses and needs of individual practitioners in psychology and psychiatry. The review covers an overview and history of information technology requirements of the practitioner community and discusses hardware and software systems, as well as issues and barriers associated with utilization. The literature indicates that mental health practitioners are just beginning to awaken to the benefits of microcomputers to assist in their private practices, but generally do not recognize the degree to which they rely on information as a resource for conducting their clinical and administrative tasks.     

Becoming-care: reframing care work as flesh work not body work

ABSTRACT

This paper highlights the central role of the flesh within care relationships and how this disrupts and progresses existing understandings of care work. It is argued here that care work is a connected and fluid assemblage of diverse and changeable factors and that this relationship is best understood as a form of flesh work. Seeing care work in this way allows the care relationship between the person being cared for and the carer/s to be seen as a process of becoming; framed here as becoming-care. To illustrate this, two examples of a care relationship taken from a previous project are presented and discussed from a deleuzoguattarian standpoint. In this way, care work is assessed and theorised at the ontological level, resulting in the formulation of an alternative way of seeing care work that perhaps better reflects its reality – where the flesh is vital.     

The victim-bind dilemma of black female sociologists in academe

In this article, the author argues that black female academicians, in particular sociologists, are in a “victim-bind,” which indicates their paradoxical ambivalence and produces stereotypical perceptions. This article examines the purpose and functions of stereotypic perceptions of black females in various phases of graduate school and early career development. It draws on the limited literature as well as the experiences and observations of the author and points out how the political culture and institutional structures of academic communities and departments shape images and career patterns of black women being professionalized as sociologists and social scientists in general. It concludes that stereotypic perceptions of black females are tied into the institutional systems of gender, race and power relations which represent in microcosm, the society at large. Her research areas are social psychological consequence of underemployment, racial/gender differences in social comparison processes, racial/gender inequality in academe, and racial/gender differences in perceptions of labor unions.