Roll Right

Labor theory of value ftw. Read Marx!

I meant to say my knowledge of the social work program is poor.

I am a 4th year sociology doctoral student at GMU. I had an MA I'm sociology before I applied, which makes a comparison of profiles difficult, but my GRE was horrible (mid 1000s before they restructured the exam), my gpa was a 4.0 and my background in sociological practice was pretty solid (theory, research, and community engagement). I was accepted to GMU sociology without funding in 2011. By 2012 I had full funding and a stipend. I can tell you more about the school and location as well, but knowledge of the social work program here is poor.

Yeah 50-60 hours as well, although now that I've finished coursework I have more free time.

Every new applicant asks this question. There will be a large share of snooty folks, who are attending top 20 schools, who will tell you that anyone attending a non top 20 school is screwed/inferior and largely unemployable. That perspective is simply wrong. I know many PhDs from non top 20 programs who were hired upon graduation for tenure track positions. You won't be hired by harvard, but would you really want to work in that atmosphere anyway?

Gunna be doing a few sessions on immigration, sociological practice, and religion...should be fun.

Yeah, if its a binary variable (1, 0) use logistic regression. If you have a categorical variable with more than two values then you ought to use multinomial regression (1, 2, 3, 4, etc).

I use an Asus q302 which is a laptop that folds into a tablet when need be. Price point is $699 for a 13 inch touch screen, i5 processor, 6 gig mem, 500 gig HD, black metal shell. No cd-rom or wired network support. No headphone jack. I am in sociology and do all my writing, GIS, and statistical analysis on it. Runs complex equations with 15 million cases in a matter of minutes.

Baller.

I think class domination is largely structural and much less direct than those examples, although I think you were having a bit of fun with that. In terms of taste being instrumental to the social reproduction of capital... Sure, but capital also determines taste, or ones access to capital determines taste, anyway. That's one of Bourdieu's points- that there is not a "dependent" or "independent" variable in the production and reproduction of social life and class groups. It would be interesting to continue this chat in another thread so we don't hijack this thread!

Bourdieu's Distinction lays out a pretty clear framework for understanding this concept as a mechanism of class domination.

I think the concept of "clean food" is a mechanism of class domination. Not much of a movement if its reinforcing social structures which existed long before the concept of "clean food" was cooked up.

So, who is headed to New Orleans in late March for the Southern Sociological Society meeting?

Historical sociology derives from the work of Max Weber and Karl Marx. If I were you, I would become well versed in their work. Peruse economy and Society from Weber and The Germany Ideology and Capital from Marx. Each of those works lay out the general theories of history which sociologists work from. It may also be good to pick up a reader on comparative historical analysis in sociology, and a reader on historical materialism.

I don't think you should compare job opportunities in the social sciences to those in the physical sciences. The disciplines are characterized by very different structures, and the demand for workers from each differ dramatically.

Also, I would suggest looking at the CV and recent publications of faculty in each department who specialize in your subject of interest. For instance, at George Mason University there are several faculty who specialize in the quantitative study of families, migration, gender inequality, information technologies, etc. You wouldn't know that unless you look at the publications and CVs of relevant faculty, though. So - don't just look at department websites, look at faculty profiles and C.Vs too.

I have a scribe who follows me around and takes dictation.

I just went through a similar period of questioning whether to continue with my graduate work. I just wrote my comprehensive examnjnation I. The sociology of globalization. Its a three day test, an essay of at least 6000 words on questions that are generally unknown to students until the test prompt is received. I must have studied for a year. I was prepapred to say the least. But I have a problem with tests meant to function as gates to advancement. I tend to lock up under that sort of pressure. So, I bumbled and fumbled with my though my thoughts and writing for the first day without making much progress. I thought to myself that I was not meant to be a sociologist, even though I've been studying it for 9 years. I just couldn't bring myself to write. The second day, however, my fiancée came to me and gave me a lot of support, and had others I'm close with call me and do the same. So I stuck with the writing and by the end of the second day I had finished two of the questions. One of those answers was much better than the other, but I still got them written. The third was hard again, I was so angry I was being made to take the test. I couldn't stop thinking that it was a hazing ritual, and that it was fucking with my mental health, and that I'm probably going to fail it and have to suffer through these three days again. But I kept writing, and when it came down to the test deadline, I was ready to pass it in with 6292 words and all three questions answered. And what's more, I think I may have passed. I'm trying to say that you should stick with your MFA even if the going seems rough. It's bound to be tough and unpleasant sometimes, but if you devout yourself to a career then you will have those moments of struggle, which will lead to further growth. And really, devout yourself to your work, otherwise grad school is not worth attending. Itll just be a series of hurdles you passed to get an MFA....and then, who cares?

Actually, that may not be true of Rice or U Virginia

All of those schools have folks who specialize in the quantitative analysis of religion. I know this from working and reading in that field.

Hold on guys.... Metal Church break. You should probably put this on your road trip play list.

I'm curious, why do you bifurcate literature and research? I think theory and practice, or literature and research, should be thought of as constituent parts of dialect. Without one, the other cannot exist. One propels the other, which acts back upon its propeller. This is the motion of science. If you don't like the techniques that you employ in your research practice, why not look for new techniques, or more holositic methods? I am trained in quantitative sociology, but I find that the statistical method is rather alientating. You seem to be feeling the same thing in your computational research. Perhaps you could suppliment your computational work with some kind of qualitative, or historical-comparative methodology which fuses theory and practice in a more organic fashion. I'm not sure if such a method exists in chemistry or biology. Its certainly not in fashion if it does exist....

It runs until 9. And if classes are in session, the BAT is running. Us Mainers don't let a little snow pee in our corn flakes.

I need to amend this. Fromm is out, Giovanni Arrighi is in. Read his book The Long 20th Century.