gilbertrollins

That's where I don't see the difference. I understand structural theories often just hold agency constant. No doubt the social role "engineer" and "father" stays relatively constant while purposive people migrate into and out of that role. But I like organizational stuff (what little i know about it so far) in that it tries to account for how the accretion of individual actions build-up structures. I think then at the next level organizations build-up into social strata and larger social frames (which may be even more rigid for the network externality they imply in the number of "users" operating in them). I get that a lot of sociology has been extremely skeptical of theory that fawns after universal models of behavior, as such frames seem to imply the very hegemony sociology-as-activism means to deconstruct. But I think sociological theory would be a lot more coherent if it attempted a more systematic theory of how different models of behavior related to one another (on the other hand I think economic theory would be a lot more coherent if it attempted less constancy). For instance, I read essays where people use terms like "norms, culture, institutions" and so on nearly interchangeably, without defining them. Then in another paragraph you get something like "racial norms affect cultural institutions in X way," which is beyond confusing when they were used to mean identical things elsewhere. Thanks for the link.

Uhm. The Policy Analysis and Management Program at Cornell requires the first year of graduate microeconomics, econometrics, and math for economics. Sociology students go to PAM?

What is stratification anyway? How is that different than organizational theory? Doesn't stratification (measured by what? income? doesn't that present a continuous distribution because there are so many observations?), stem from organizational hierarchy? Are the fields delineated by the micro/macro dimension? What is household economics?

The tenor of many common-press books can be quite high. And if you're interested in community activism and anarchy it's strange that you hope to limit your circulation to academic circles (which are mainly where University Press books get passed around). I would consider talking with publishers who have published common-press books you like.

also: are public goods problems, theories of critical mass, thresholds, cascades, etc common enough in sociology that a wide range of committee members will have some background in them? Are those models taught at some point in most UG soc education?

Chicago and at least one other school I remember saying they're especially interested in papers with an empirical development of the theory. Broadly interpreted I take that to mean: "We're looking for people who will be ready to submit publishable second-year papers with only minor coaching on minutiae germane to their field." Mine is my thesis proposal; noticed some mechanical and grammatical errors in one I already sent out. Whoops. Nothing totally dastardly, but not a condition I would have wanted a journal editor to desk review either. Hoping those don't get it trashed - the SOP is solid, and my letter writers are blowing me up pretty big. Hoping those take heavier weights than a skimming (close reading?) of my essay.

Hey all, What is the weight of the writing sample? Are they read extremely carefully?

Removed at Users Request.

Scott Page is a very, very smart guy.

Also, what are the texts commonly used for grad level stat courses in soc programs? I want to get under the hood with stats so I can develop novel empirical techniques for textual analysis. Was thinking about doing the graduate econometrics sequence wherever I end up, but might miss estimation techniques more germane to sociological questions. Betting sociometrics and econometrics are very different courses, but maybe not.

What are the modal math courses for sociology applicants? I'm thinking I'm quant heavy, but that might not be the case. I have four semesters of calculus, linear algebra, intro to proofs, econometrics, applied stats with calculus, and analysis. Is that heavy or average for people who want to do networks and multivariate estimation et. al.? Are there a good deal of math majors that transition into quant sociology? I keep up among the math-o's, but I don't compete with them (so for instance, not going to write graph theoretic proofs for network theory).

I have no idea what Coursera is, and professors are likely not to either. So you're asking them to go and research the quality of the certificates, which I suspect they won't do. Moreover, I usually hear about people reapplying after doing additional research in some regard, not just taking more courses. Also committees will be looking for advanced (200+ level) coursework. So introductory courses get discounted, and probably even further if taken through an unaccredited institution.

I guess I was asking because I don't have a very good idea of placement standards in sociology. All of my writers are economists, and I don't know a lot about the scene.

I couldn't help it. This is too funny:

The cost in extra time of glancing at a CV is very low relative to its marginal benefit (in the event people like you may get tossed for having a bad GRE day). That said -- there is plenty of evidence to show that people are pretty poor calculators of marginal costs and benefits.

Yeah, I suppose I don't care about people bumping old threads if I find them useful. I think PMing, public posting, or otherwise telling people to hurry up and make decisions because you have been wait-listed is unprofessional and will probably on balance do nothing to get you a slot at a program.

My experience living in housing cooperatives, visiting intentional communities, and watching artist and other cooperatives consistently fail is most of my reason for thinking Occupy is silly. Well that and the level of economic reasoning involved. So I thought Proudhon's misadventures were germane. I don't know what comes in between the ellipses in that quote, but the whole thing is a non sequitur. Slavery is not murder. Slavery is slavery. Murder is murder. And property certainly is not theft. Theft is by definition the violation of property -- it's involuntary exchange of possession. Trade is the voluntary exchange of property. If we allow these sorts of philosophical sophisms, then we can proffer that "books are stupidity," or "women are men." And express our dismay that we're being misunderstood when we say that "the television is the dog." Proudhon, like Marx, and Locke before either of them, tried to distinguish and exalt labor value from exchange value. Locke thought there was 1) inviolable value in the land itself and then that 2) the laborer gains right to the value in the land when his labor is "mix'd with it." Turns out value is a psychological and social construct, that labor theories of value can't predict a price if they tried because they divorce human desires (demand) from human productive capacities (supply). Also turns out that the point of exchange, where those forces have to find some agreement, is precisely what guys like Proudhon and Marx tried and failed to philosophically incise from society -- possibly because their history was so atrocious they thought exchange and paid employment was something new -- they weren't. Proudhon and Marx also thought, as was common among every 19th century intellectual, that Thomas Robert Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population was correct -- which it wasn't. So they envisioned an exploding population with greater and greater exploitation and conflict, rising value of land (because of its increasing scarcity) creating a rentier class. Etc. Turns out none of that came true. Population growth rates are at about 0 in the developed world, and approaching 0 everywhere but Africa. The value of land has in fact dropped dramatically, so one gets rich by inventing iPads instead of renting farm land. In fact there is no empirical evidence to show that the value of land and real estate continuously rise in the long run -- yet everyone's hair was blown back when housing prices crashed in 2008. Per capita violence rates are on balance lower in the world than they've ever been. Urban violence in the United States has been on the decline since the 1990s. Turns out that the the proliferation of exchange, and exchange values, has accompanies precisely the opposite circumstances Proudhon and Marx envisioned.

Department secretaries throw out applications, or at least put them in an autoreject pile before sending them to committee. Such an application might get a second glance for letter writer names or at the CV, but does not fare well. These people are under time constraints, and have to narrow the pile down before giving substantive attention to an application.

Hmm. Didn't Proudhon start one or two communes that eventually failed? Or was that one of his contemporaries. Anyone who believes property is theft is going to have to answer to why possessive pronouns like MY and YOUR have emerged in languages across culture and geography. Owning things also goes much deeper than the contracted transacting of material goods. I own and identify with my tastes, my ideas, my emotional tendencies, and so on. Keep an eye out for David Graeber's next daisy-chain world history, where he shows that the State imposed egoistic psychology on people, through linguistic decree: "thou shalt refer to objects with possessive pronouns." He's going to prove that both money and language are not emergent phenomena as described by a categorical consensus of the scholars who have studied them for 200 years, but rather artificial Statist constructions, developed in order to trick people into believing in the false consciousness of property, so that their labor could be expropriated from them through market exchange and taxation. With a little bit of work, we'll be able to launch radical new social forms by abandoning units of account and stores of value, and the use of possessive pronouns. Dissenters will be shot. It's worth noting that Thomas Moore's manuscript Utopia prescribed the violent enforcement on his paradise island. Turns out he underestimated the genocide that would eventually result from such a scheme.

That is the common consensus on an economics board I'm on as well -- you really need to consider seriously whether you'd actually go spend 5 years somewhere when you put in "safety" applications -- otherwise you're wasting everyone's time and money, especially your own. Sounds like movement is no different in sociology than anywhere else yet -- you move down in rank for your first job, and then down again for your tenure track. UG --> Grad may be the only part of this process where there's genuine opportunity for upward mobility. If that's the case, I agree that staying a year and reapplying is the optimal strategy to maximize net present-discounted utility. (thought I'd throw some economese in there - zing!) I'm in Chicago, and was thinking I would try to get an RAship at NU or Chicago over the summer if things don't go well this round. Economists take external-institutional RA's with some frequency. Is that the case in sociology or no? Also, what are the R&R time frames on most sociology journals? Six months? I'd probably start hammering something empirical and publishable the minute I got shut out, to try and get a good line on my CV before reapplying. The academic job market is crap everywhere, bottom line. As far as the "neoliberal hegemony creates a world such that economists are employable" meme goes - sure, there are people who are happy in economics to go work as applied statisticians for companies, or put mortgage backed security figures into spread sheets for regulators. But there are still tons of "I wanted to be Einstein and ended up in Lichtenstein" economics job market candidates out there. You've just basically got to have a zany discount factor to want to be an academic -- the academy is a tightly controlled monopoly with enormous barriers to entry and rents sought and captured in terms of prestige and financial patronage. The idea that tenure and public funding of education work together to foster intellectual independence and competitive checks on political and ideological hegemony in scholarship pretty much abuse every statistic one can get about the height of barriers to entering the scholarly conversation.

Hi all -- thanks again for all the help so far. My list is basically the top ten for economic sociology, plus Duke and Indiana for the economic and mathematical sociology. Recognizing that I'm not Good Will Hunting, I'm thinking about UC Irving and other potentials. Observation, correct or incorrect? Mathematical and economic sociology have made bigger inroads at middle ranks and lower tiers than Ivy's where methodological inertia may have a stronger hold. I've been checking placement at lower ranked programs, and it seems . . oof. How bad is the job market in sociology? I hear it's atrocious, but that's from economics peers who all have options to go into private industry and government if not academics. Another observation, correct or incorrect? There seems to be a lot more lateral and vertical movement in sociology than other disciplines, who might not be as egalitarian minded. So, what is the probability of ending up in a 4/4 teaching or liberal arts position if one attends a middle ranked program -- approaching 1? And are other departments like Indiana, Duke, and Irving placing students up/laterally who specialize in quant methods, econ soc, etc as these fields grow?

Bimba, Advanced linear algebra and analysis courses are nothing like Calc I and II - at all. The emphasize deductive proof writing, which you'll be doing an incredible amount of in a graduate program. Even at a lower ranked program which is *ultimately* producing empirical people (that is, running regressions), your micro and macro sequence will eat you alive. Considering the level of mathematical skills you're at now, you will need at least another year of mathematics to get ready for a low ranked program. I suggest you take a look at some recent articles from the American Economic Review, and the National Bureau of Economic Research working papers series to see what you're getting yourself in to. Doing a PhD in economics for any reason other than your own unflinching desire to study and conduct economic analyses at the professional level is not a good idea.

You'll get more qualified advice about your fields at http://www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/

Also search EconLit - your library should have access.

You're currently enrolled in a program? Dissertation proposals, especially on such a heterodox topic, are not recommended for applications, and can get you rejected.