Two recent encounters with arguments made – one on a podcast, one in a book meant for a broad reading audience – reminded me of the unique ways academics assess arguments. In both cases, the makers of the argument made connections across different sources and sets of evidence to present a particular point of view. As I considered these arguments, here are two features of my own thought processes that stood out:
A tendency to defer to those with expertise in a particular area rather than assemble broad arguments with multiple data sources. It is difficult to make big arguments with multiple moving pieces as this might cover ground addressed by numerous scholars across different disciplines. In academia, scholars often have fairly narrow sets of expertise. Can one argument adequately represent all the important parts of knowledge? Why not assemble a larger argument from the clear expertise multiple scholars hold rather than try to do it as one person or a small team?
An interest in assessing the methods and form of the argument from a disciplinary perspective. Different academic fields go about the study of the world differently. They have different methods and think differently about what might count as evidence. They put their arguments together in different ways. The content of an argument or the rhetorical force of an argument matter but we often expect them to be presented in particular ways. Go outside these methodologies or formats and academics might struggle to past this.
Based on this, I wonder how well academics can work with arguments made to the public when we have been trained in specific that work within the parameters of academia.
What do students learn by taking sociology? What is lost if fewer students do? It struck John Reynolds, a professor of sociology at Florida State University, that these are the kinds of questions his discipline can help answer. While the Board of Governors overseeing the state’s public universities on Wednesday voted against a proposal to pause and collect more evidence to assess the impact before taking its vote, the “budding social scientists” in his “Sociology of Education” course were learning the very skills needed to conduct such research. So he walked students through the process in class on Thursday.
Reynolds and his students examined various arguments key players had made for and against keeping sociology. Then Reynolds split the 37 students into small groups and had each propose a research study to evaluate those claims using one of the research methods they covered in the course — school ethnography, intensive interviews, social survey, and analysis of school administrative data. Reynolds plans to award a small prize to each group whose proposals “were most detailed and true to the strengths of the method they were assigned,” he told TheChronicle in an email…
Offering a course as an avenue for meeting a general-education requirement signifies that the state regards it as important, said Alison C. Cares, an associate professor and the associate chair of the sociology department at the University of Central Florida. And while there’s overlap among disciplines — students have many options for developing critical-thinking skills — sociology has something unique to offer, she believes. Sociology is a discipline that “really jolts students out of an individualistic approach,” Cares said. Of course people have individual agency, she added, but at the same time, “there are predictable patterns, based on how society is organized, that make decisions and actions more or less likely.” Understanding that can enhance the way a doctor cares for a patient, or a teacher instructs a student, or a businessperson leads a company.
The second reason involves the way that required general education courses help students find courses and what they want to study:
Students will still be able to take introductory sociology — and it could still meet other university-specific requirements — but professors anticipate that its absence from the gen-ed menu could significantly reduce enrollment. This is partly because of exposure — a large share of students likely have found or been pointed to the course in order to fulfill the social-sciences requirement. Sociology is what one professor called a “found major,” that is, one that students might not have heard about before they get to campus, but fall in love with during their first course…
That’s not the only problem. Some degree programs (or combinations thereof) have such exhaustive requirements that students often look to meet as many of them as efficiently as possible, so they are unlikely to take other courses even if they really want to. The ability to meet a state requirement while taking introductory sociology is especially helpful, Aranda said, for students planning to attend medical school, many of whom have sought out the course since the MCAT added a section on social sciences nearly a decade ago.
I imagine faculty in many disciplines would make this same argument. Their field of study offers a unique perspective that students benefit from. This is the reason we have different academic disciplines: they have particular ways that they study, write, and operate. Additionally, general education classes offer gateways for more students into that field of study. Not all disciplines are represented in required courses so this is valuable real estate.
Sociology and other disciplines will continue to have to make arguments for why they should be included in curricula and why students should take their courses. If college courses and majors are a marketplace where students respond to different incentives, disciplines offer different perceived advantages and disadvantages. Whether this market logic should determine the worthiness of disciplines and their presence is worth debating but there is no doubt that the market does have some patterns and cycles.
As a sociologist who has regularly taught Introduction to Sociology over the years, these two issues come up in this class. What value does sociology have to college students who may never touch sociology again or know little about it? I enjoy teaching sociology and its methods so this is a fun challenge.
Later this morning, I will present at the Conference on Illinois History. The title of my talk is “Racial Exclusion, Public Housing, and Affordable Housing: The Cases of Chicago and Naperville” and I present in a session with my collaborator Caroline Kisiel of DePaul University.
This talk builds on previous research I did involving Cabrini-Green in Chicago and in my dissertation on the development and trajectories of three Chicago suburbs. The work is sociological but also historical. The larger scope of research involved weeks in archives looking at primary and secondary sources, reading through newspaper accounts, reading academic histories, and conducting interviews with leaders. I published portions of this work in several outlets, including the Journal of Urban History (Cabrini-Green, the surprising growth of Naperville) and Urban Affairs Review (key character moments in suburban development). Additionally, I have published work in what might be considered media studies. For example, looking at the McMansion on The Sopranos(Journal of Popular Film and Television). Or, examining the architecture and design of teardowns (Journal of Urban Design).
I have done this all with professional training in sociology. Some sociologists do more historical-comparative work and I did have some training in this during my sociology Ph.D. program. I would consider all of this work to be sociological in nature, even if conventions regarding writing, evidence, and making strong arguments differs across academic fields. I have learned much by engaging with work in other fields and it has pushed me to develop my own thinking and writing.
I am grateful for conferences, colleagues, and journals that have been gracious with a sociologist stepping into these fields.
Chetty has found that opportunity does not correlate with many traditional economic measures, such as employment or wage growth. In the search for opportunity’s cause, he is instead focusing on an idea borrowed from sociology: social capital. The term refers broadly to the set of connections that ease a person’s way through the world, providing support and inspiration and opening doors.
Economics has long played the role of sociology’s annoying older brother—conventionally accomplished and wholeheartedly confident, unaware of what he doesn’t know, while still commanding everyone’s attention. Chetty, though, is part of a younger generation of scholars who have embraced a style of quantitative social science that crosses old disciplinary lines. There are strong hints in his research that social capital and mobility are intimately connected; even a crude measure of social capital, such as the number of bowling alleys in a neighborhood, seems to track with opportunity. His data also suggest that who you know growing up can have lasting effects. A paper on patents he co-authored found that young women were more likely to become inventors if they’d moved as children to places where many female inventors lived. (The number of male inventors had little effect.) Even which fields inventors worked in was heavily influenced by what was being invented around them as children. Those who grew up in the Bay Area had some of the highest rates of patenting in computers and related fields, while those who spent their childhood in Minneapolis, home of many medical-device manufacturers, tended to invent drugs and medical devices.* Chetty is currently working with data from Facebook and other social-media platforms to quantify the links between opportunity and our social networks.Sociologists embrace many ways of understanding the world. They shadow people and move into communities, wondering what they might find out. They collect data and do quantitative analysis and read economics papers, but their work is also informed by psychology and cultural studies. “When you are released from the harsh demands of experiment, you are allowed to make new discoveries and think more freely about what is going on,” says David Grusky, a Stanford sociology professor who collaborates with Chetty. I asked Princeton’s Edin what she thought would end up being the one thing that best explains the peaks and valleys of American opportunity. She said her best guess is “some kind of social glue”—the ties that bind people, fostered by well-functioning institutions, whether they are mosques or neighborhood soccer leagues. The staff at Opportunity Insights has learned: When an economist gets lost, a sociologist can touch his elbow and say, You know, I’ve been noticing some things.
A few thoughts on this description of a relationship between two academic disciplines:
The family metaphor is an interesting choice. Both disciplines are in the larger family of social sciences. They share some common interests. They often bicker like siblings. But, they are not twins here – one is the older sibling, one is the younger. The family picture suggests the two disciplines are tied together forever but their standing within the family is a contentious one.
The primary difference suggested above is one of methodology: economists look at lots of quantitative data, sociologists “embrace many ways of understanding the world.” There are methodological differences between the disciplines but also other important differences, such as theoretical assumptions about how humans and societies operate. If both fields move toward using similar methodologies, does this bridge their differences? I would guess not.
The suggestion at the end is that economists need sociologists when there is something that is hard to uncover or goes beyond their models. If those conditions are not met, then relying on sociology may not be necessary. Might both fields be more open to working with each other before they run into issues? Do sociologist need economists to help them explain difficult things?
Now they won’t let me drive around anyone smarter than a sociology professor.
A bit more context: Alex Dunphy had the task of driving around a Nobel Prize winner in a golf cart on her college campus. Because she was starstruck by the researcher, she drove recklessly and he fell out. Thus, she could only be entrusted with a sociology professor (and lower?).
This is likely just a throwaway line and yet it reminds me that sociologists rarely exist in shows and films. From earlier blog posts:
This reminds me of a quote about statisticians in the book Health and Numbers:
There are aspects of statistics other than it being intellectually difficult that are barriers to learning. For one thing, statistics does not benefit from a glamorous image that motivates students to persist through tedious and frustrating lessons…there are no TV dramas with a good-looking statistician playing the lead, and few mothers’ chests swell with pride as they introduce their son or daughter as “the statistician.”
Many academic fields likely do not come off well in shows and films. The exceptions, like Indiana Jones (though not exactly a representative exemplar of his field), are notable.
I recently gave a short presentation in a training seminar regarding introducing first year students to different disciplinary perspectives. For each of the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, I described methods and goals. For the goals of the social sciences, I put down “just society” and “social wrongs righted.” One of my colleagues asked me a question about this: “Do the people at the top R1 schools adhere to these goals?” Just having returned from the ASA meetings in Philadelphia and thinking about some of the things I saw there, I said yes.
This is a good question to consider on Labor Day. What are sociologists after when they work? Here are some options:
-just society/social wrong righted: a mindset devoted to improving society, sometimes attributed to an activist approach though American sociology has a deep tradition of this (even if it was shunted into social work and not promoted as much at leading schools)
-knowing more about the social world: this quest for knowledge and a better understanding of whatever phenomena is under study could be at the root of every academic enterprise
-a way to achieve status and power: the field may be limited be compared to others but academic titles and academic merits (published articles, name recognition, grants, school, etc.) still provide a certain status
-the joy of teaching and mentoring students: these expectations likely differ dramatically across institutions (let alone personalities) but there can be both immediate and long-term gratification in making a difference in the life of students
-a satisfying way to occupy one’s mind and fulfill intellectual curiosity
I suppose individual sociologists might be able to pursue unique combinations of these five options within their own experiences and institutional contexts. Yet, on the whole, I’m pretty comfortable asserting sociology and other social sciences want to make the world a better place.
Economists, you see, put draft versions of their papers online seemingly as soon as they’ve finished typing. Attend their big annual meeting, as I have several times, and virtually every paper discussed is available beforehand for download and perusal. In fact, they’re available even if you don’t go to the meeting. I wrote a column two years ago arguing that this openness had given economists a big leg up over the other social sciences in media attention and political influence, and noting that a few sociologists agreed and were trying to nudge their discipline — which disseminates its research mainly through paywalled academic journals and university-press books — in that direction with a new open repository for papers called SocArxiv. Now that I’ve experienced the ASA annual meeting for the first time, I can report that (1) things haven’t progressed much since 2016, and (2) I have a bit more sympathy for sociologists’ reticence to act like economists, although I continue to think it’s holding them back.
SocArxiv’s collection of open-access papers is growing steadily if not spectacularly, and Sociological Science, an open-access journal founded in 2014, is carving out a respected role as, among other things, a place to quickly publish articles of public interest. “Unions and Nonunion Pay in the United States, 1977-2015” by Patrick Denice of the University of Western Ontario and Jake Rosenfeld of Washington University in St. Louis, for example, was submitted June 12, accepted July 10 and published on Wednesday, the day after it was presented at the ASA meeting. These dissemination tools are used by only a small minority of sociologists, though, and the most sparsely attended session I attended in three-plus days at their annual meeting was the one on “Open Scholarship in Sociology” organized by the University of Maryland’s Philip Cohen, the founder of SocArxiv and one of the discipline’s most prominent social-media voices. This despite the fact that it was great, featuring compelling presentations by Cohen, Sociological Review deputy editor Kim Weeden of Cornell University and higher-education expert Elizabeth Popp Berman of the State University of New York at Albany, and free SocArxiv pens for all.
As I made the rounds of other sessions, I did come to a better understanding of why sociologists might be more reticent than economists to put their drafts online. The ASA welcomes journalists to its annual meeting and says they can attend all sessions where research is presented, but few reporters show up and it’s clear that most of those presenting research don’t consider themselves to be speaking in public. The most dramatic example of this in Philadelphia came about halfway through a presentation involving a particular corporation. The speaker paused, then asked the 50-plus people in the room not to mention the name of said corporation to anybody because she was about to return to an undercover job there. That was a bit ridiculous, given that there were sociologists live-tweeting some of the sessions. But there was something charming and probably healthy about the willingness of the sociologists at the ASA meeting to discuss still-far-from-complete work with their peers. When a paper is presented at an economics conference, many of the discussant’s comments and audience questions are attempts to poke holes in the reasoning or methodology. At the ASA meeting, it was usually, “This is great. Have you thought about adding …?” Also charming and probably healthy was the high number of graduate students presenting research alongside the professors, which you don’t see so much at the economists’ equivalent gathering.
All in all — and I’m sure there are sociological terms to describe this, but I’m not familiar with them — sociology seems more focused on internal cohesion than economics is. This may be partly because it’s what Popp Berman calls a “low-consensus discipline,” with lots of different methodological approaches and greatly varying standards of quality and rigor. Economists can be mean to each other in public yet still present a semi-united face to the world because they use a widely shared set of tools to arrive at answers. Sociologists may feel that they don’t have that luxury.
Disciplinary differences can be mystifying at times.
I wonder about a third possible difference in addition to the two provided: different conceptions in sociology and economics about what constitutes good arguments and data (hinted at above with the idea of “lots of different methodological approaches and greatly varying standards of quality and rigor.”) Both disciplines do aspire to the idea of social science where empirical data is used to test hypotheses about human behavior, usually in collectives, works. But, this is tricky to do as there are numerous pitfalls along the way. For example, accurate measurement is difficult even when a researcher has clearly identified a concept. Additionally, it is my sense that sociologists as a whole may be more open to qualitative and quantitative data (even with occasional flare-ups between researchers studying the same topic yet falling in different methodological camps). With these methodological questions, sociologists may feel they need more time to connect their methods to a convincing causal and scientific argument
A fourth possible reason behind the differences (also hinted at above with the idea of economists having a “semi-united face” to present): sociology has a reputation as a more left-leaning discipline. Some researchers may prefer to have all their ducks in a row before they expose their work to full public scrutiny. The work of economists is more generally accepted by the public and some leaders while sociology regularly has to work against some backlash. (As an example, see conservativeleaders complain about sociology excusing poor behavior when the job of the discipline is to explain human behavior.) Why expose your work to a less welcoming public earlier when you could take a little more time to polish the argument?
I attended and presented at the Urban History Association biennial meetings this weekend and I made some observations during my foray. Some thoughts:
In the last five years or so, I’ve been to both specialist conferences – usually involving the sociology of religion – and general conferences – the American Sociological Association. They each have their perks. I particularly enjoyed two things about the specialty aspect of the UHA meetings: (1) it was nice to be with a group of scholars who shared a common set of readings and understandings of a particular social phenomena and (2) the smaller size seemed to allow for more conversations during and after sessions. Even though the conference drew attendees largely from R1 schools – and people from liberal arts colleges like myself were in short supply and tended to be from the Chicago area – it felt pretty inviting.
Several quick observations on the discipline of history as I saw it practiced:
-There was a tension between particular cases – micro history – and broad sweeping generalizations about social patterns. The micro history could be quite minute, perhaps focusing on a particular influential figure (or arguing why that figure should be viewed as influential) or brief time period while other papers and sessions focused on 50+ years or emphasized broader movements like modernism. Individual papers tended toward the micro while panels could think more broadly. I would guess that at least a few of the papers are part of larger works – dissertations, manuscripts – that touch on broader periods or forces.
-There was an informal dress code for male attendees: dress shirt and jacket. Not everyone followed this but there were more sports coats and blazers than at the typical sociological gathering.
-Race, class, and gender popped up now and then but this trinity of analysis wasn’t as present as at sociological meetings.
-There were some interesting instances of trying to connect historical events to current events, particularly in a panel on Silicon Valley. But, often the papers stuck to their particular historical moment.
-Almost every paper began with a story or anecdote from history. This is more acceptable with qualitative sociological work but rarer in sociology as a whole.
-Every introduction I saw included a short bio of the scholar’s education and work. Sociologists rarely give this information. Does this suggest that pedigree is more important for the audience or do they benefit from having more information regarding the speaker?
I realize that now eight years into my post-graduate school career, I feel much more comfortable at conferences. I had met only two of the conference attendees prior to the meetings but it was easier to introduce myself to others and participate when I had questions. During graduate school, I remember this being more difficult: who wants to talk to a lowly graduate student? My enjoyment of conferences has gone up as I feel like I have a leg to stand on (I have published works that people can read) and I feel like I can contribute (I’ve wrestled with a number of issues in my own work and in the classroom). These two factors work in another way: even as I do some urban history work, I likely would not have attended this meeting without receiving an invitation from the organizer of a session to submit a paper.
Tomorrow, I’ll present the three most intriguing ideas I heard at the conference from my one day of attending sessions.
To come up with learning outcomes in the selected six disciplines, which collectively account for more than 35 percent of undergraduate student majors in the U.S., the Measuring College Learning project began by contacting disciplinary ssociations in each field. Those groups helped select 10 to 15 faculty members to lead the work — a total of 70 professors participated…
In sociology, for example, one of the five essential concepts is the “sociological eye,” which means students “will recognize key theoretical frameworks and assumptions upon which the discipline is founded and differentiated from other social sciences.” That underpinning, the book said, includes founding theoretical traditions (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Mead), a critique of rationality to explain human behavior and how social forces affect individuals.
Socialization is another essential concept, which is defined as students understanding the relationship between self and society, and how the self is socially constructed and maintained at multiple levels.
On the competency side, the panel said undergraduates in sociology should be able to apply scientific principles to understand the social world, evaluate the quality of social scientific data and use sociological knowledge to inform policy debates and promote understanding, among other essential competencies (there are six total).
I imagine this would generate a lot of discussion among sociologists about the merits of these kinds of outcomes, what is essential to the discipline (particularly at the undergraduate level), and how these might be accurately assessed.
On this general topic, is sociology uniquely positioned because of its emphases and skills (ability to see the big picture, focus on social structures, variety of methods, etc.) to contribute to assessment conversations?
JOHN LEO: To many of us, it looks like a monoculture.
JONATHAN HAIDT: Yes. It is certainly a monoculture. The academic world in the humanities is a monoculture. The academic world in the social sciences is a monoculture – except in economics, which is the only social science that has some real diversity. Anthropology and sociology are the worst — those fields seem to be really hostile and rejecting toward people who aren’t devoted to social justice.
JOHN LEO: And why would they be hostile?
JONATHAN HAIDT: You have to look at the degree to which a field has a culture of activism. Anthropology is a very activist field. They fight for the rights of oppressed people, as they see it. My field, social psychology, has some activism in it, but it’s not the dominant strain. Most of us, we really are thinking all day long about what control condition wasn’t run. My field really is oriented towards research. Now a lot of us are doing research on racism and prejudice. It’s the biggest single area of the field. But I’ve never felt that social psychology is first and foremost about changing the world, rather than understanding it. So my field is certainly still fixable. I think that if we can just get some more viewpoint diversity in it, it will solve the bias problem.
Interesting view from the outside as Haidt says later in the interview, “Anthro is completely lost. I mean, it’s really militant activists.” From the inside, a lot of sociology faculty and students seem to be at least partly motivated by wanting to address particular social issues or problems. Whether that clouds their research judgment more than social psychologists – who just want to understand the world, as any scientist would claim – would be interesting to explore.
If you haven’t read it, Haidt’s book The Righteous Mindis fascinating. He argues that opposing sides – say in politics or academic disciplines – have different narratives about how the world works and this causes them to simply talk past each other. In a 2012 piece, Haidt describes the moral narratives of the American political left and right:
A good way to follow the sacredness is to listen to the stories that each tribe tells about itself and the larger nation. The Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith once summarized the moral narrative told by the American left like this: “Once upon a time, the vast majority” of people suffered in societies that were “unjust, unhealthy, repressive and oppressive.” These societies were “reprehensible because of their deep-rooted inequality, exploitation and irrational traditionalism — all of which made life very unfair, unpleasant and short. But the noble human aspiration for autonomy, equality and prosperity struggled mightily against the forces of misery and oppression and eventually succeeded in establishing modern, liberal, democratic, capitalist, welfare societies.” Despite our progress, “there is much work to be done to dismantle the powerful vestiges of inequality, exploitation and repression.” This struggle, as Smith put it, “is the one mission truly worth dedicating one’s life to achieving.”
This is a heroic liberation narrative. For the American left, African-Americans, women and other victimized groups are the sacred objects at the center of the story. As liberals circle around these groups, they bond together and gain a sense of righteous common purpose.
Contrast that narrative with one that Ronald Reagan developed in the 1970s and ’80s for conservatism. The clinical psychologist Drew Westen summarized the Reagan narrative like this: “Once upon a time, America was a shining beacon. Then liberals came along and erected an enormous federal bureaucracy that handcuffed the invisible hand of the free market. They subverted our traditional American values and opposed God and faith at every step of the way.” For example, “instead of requiring that people work for a living, they siphoned money from hard-working Americans and gave it to Cadillac-driving drug addicts and welfare queens.” Instead of the “traditional American values of family, fidelity and personal responsibility, they preached promiscuity, premarital sex and the gay lifestyle” and instead of “projecting strength to those who would do evil around the world, they cut military budgets, disrespected our soldiers in uniform and burned our flag.” In response, “Americans decided to take their country back from those who sought to undermine it.”
This, too, is a heroic narrative, but it’s a heroism of defense. In this narrative it’s God and country that are sacred — hence the importance in conservative iconography of the Bible, the flag, the military and the founding fathers. But the subtext in this narrative is about moral order. For social conservatives, religion and the traditional family are so important in part because they foster self-control, create moral order and fend off chaos. (Think of Rick Santorum’s comment that birth control is bad because it’s “a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”) Liberals are the devil in this narrative because they want to destroy or subvert all sources of moral order.
Holding so tightly to different understandings of the world means that compromising is very difficult.
Legally Sociable 