got out of the office today...
i'm working with good friends and minnversity colleagues on a project at the public/policy/professional sociology nexus. today, we made our first pitch to the professionals we'll need to greenlight access to the data.it was good.
as academics, we were well outside our comfort zone but energized. we learned much that we'd never find in the journals and we met some good people who needed answers. all agreed that we were onto something cool and unknown and almost-but-not-quite impossible. so, i'm encouraged.
if you want me to believe you, you believe me. The society of man is cemented with mutual credit. Your neighbor's vision is as true for him as your own vision is true for you.
-- miguel de unamuno, our lord don quixote
posted by christopher uggen @ 11:21 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Sounds really exciting, Chris -- I hope it goes well.
My favorite piece of art + public sociology. Nice work!
Any thoughts on public sociology two years after the 2004 ASA meetings? Momentum seems to have been completely lost (if it was ever truly there), although it's entirely possible I'm not seeing it from my dissertation writing/job search cave.
Just don't forget, I was promised a StunCo testing room and willing subjects...
thanks, alan, newport, and woz.
maybe you're right about waning momentum, but dr. burawoy identified and tapped into an enormous constituency -- and that constituency ain't going away. i think that pubsoc will be revised and reconstituted for this group in a way that doesn't create the same fissures with self-identified professional sociology.
my prediction? the next wave will tap into the same berkeley pubsoc search for meaning, but...
(1) it will emerge from the heartland rather than the coasts;
(2) it will be self-consciously empirical and evidence-based; and,
(3) it will chip away at the wall between the public and policy quadrants.
but hey, that's just one vision...
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