Palito

Congrats to everybody so far who has received good news! I'm a current student at UW-Madison. If anybody who received an offer of admission to Wisconsin has questions about the program, feel free to PM me.

Who compensates parents in Germany?

Aside from the Motherhood penalty, one might look at stagnation in US wages over the past 30 - 40 years as it coincides with the reconstitution of the American labor force. In other words, how much of this the wage reduction is the result of downward pressure on men's wages? What are the most common jobs for women and what does pay look like for all in that occupational market? Also, in Liquidation: an Ethnography of Wall Street, Karen Ho shows that women and people of color working in Wall Street are differently sorted into less prestigious and less high paying "front office" jobs because the culture of performing task successfully in these positions grants preference to white males with a specific kind of cultural capital (pp.107-121). Ho goes on to show that there is a substantive gap in pay for women and people of color on Wall Street. So at least in that specific field of investment banking, we have data that provokes us to consider that gender discrimination can be revealed through means other than looking at aggregate data on wages. On the apparent contradiction of choice: the "choice" to carry a baby to term and commit oneself to raising that baby is considerably different than the "choice" to pursue a career, or to work generally. In the first place, nobody is a fluid free agent making a simple rational decision about things. It's just more complex than that. The "choice" to carry a fetus to term and raise a child results from a biological precondition; the "choice" of being in the workforce stems from social preconditions. Many women don't have the choice to not work. They might be single, they might have partners who cannot earn as much money as they can and have little other choice to become the breadwinner. A woman might choose to work even though she has a child, as my sister has done, or she may have to work out of concern for providing for her family, as my partner did for the first year of our sons lives, or she may abstain from motherhood because she feels she must make a choice between a career or a child. Part of the issue here is that the culture of work in the US promotes long hours, which conflicts with living a full family life. Child-rearing is a serious and worthy endeavor that has a significant impact on the character of future citizens and laborers. Other informal tasks and roles have been subsumed into the economic order. Why not compensate motherhood for its economic contributions?

Students at Indiana enjoy the distinct advantage of being mentored by the entire department. It was really clear to me that students also interact closely with specific faculty, but the program is distinct in that everybody is looking out for every student. People do not fall through the cracks at Indiana, and it is clear that ensuring that everyone succeeds is part of the department's strategy for success. You will be hard pressed to find a program that does more to ready students to be professional sociologists. I think the egalitarian approach to designing the program has helped to create an environment where students do not feel at odds with each other, and often collaborate. Also, I heard about lots of collaboration between students and faculty, resulting in publications. Additionally, students are encouraged to take a class dedicated to turning a draft of a paper into a publication. One can take this class multiple times, and it seems to have really contributed to students publication records and, consequently, careers. Bottom line: If you go to Indiana, you will leave a really solid sociologist, maybe even a "star," and you will have benefited from a very deliberate program of professionalization that will make you very competitive in the job market. I really was so impressed with what they're doing in Bloomington.

Officially accepted the offer at UW-Madison. To anyone else planning on attending, message me! I'm really curious to see who will be in the cohort!

@blixx, it's a ridiculously good potential cohort.

If you have the time and resources, and you do not have a another sample that you feel reflects your current ability to compose a paper, it really couldn't hurt. In fact, it might be a benefit in unforeseen ways. Last year, I applied to 7 programs. I did not get into a single one. I took a really critical look at my dossier of materials and identified every weakness that I could. I saw my writing sample as a big weakness, so decided to write a new essay over the summer. Because I was intent on creating a really convincing narrative arc for my academic experience and transition into sociology, I looked for ways to make all the pieces of my application fit together. But I was also really concerned with demonstrating that I could put together an essay that more or less fit the form that an essay in sociology might typically fit. So, beyond showing competence, the writing sample I produced linked in directly with the research program I outlined in my SOP, as well as with a number of activities that I had been engaged in that I pointed to in order to demonstrate my commitment to advanced studies in the field. I was really surprised by how successful I was in my applications this year, and I think the cohesion with which I constructed and arranged my application materials was a big factor in realizing that success. At least one DGS mentioned that they found the writing sample really impressive, and then jumped into how the social problems and processes that I started in on in my essay might play out in research at that program. Bottom line, if you have a really solid piece, you should probably follow Amlobo's advice. If you don't feel confident about what you have, you should know that you will only become a sociologist by doing sociology, so you might as well dig in and start building a larger research program for yourself.

I think Magicunicorn was commenting that the variability of housing prices in student areas tends to be smaller than the variability between cities more broadly, so comparing extremes -- Nashville and Palo Alto -- probably isn't that helpful, unless of course those are your two options. @Magicunicorn, thank you for point making the point about program amenities (or whatever you want to call it). Funding, or enough discretionary income, to travel to conferences is one factor that I hadn't considered. That's helpful.

I applied to UCLA last year and never heard back from them. Seriously, they just never told me anything. I called and asked and the graduate secretary told me that she couldn't tell me over the phone. Then, she never told me at all. That, combined with the fact that I really don't want to live in L.A. led me not to reapply this year.

I'm concerned as well. I have expressed that concern to the DGS. I think specific figures will not really emerge until the program has an idea of how many people they accept the offer. The one piece of advice I have received is to connect with specific professors at Visit Day and see if they might have work for you on their research projects. This is a way of bumping up the stipend. Another thing is that the program really pushes students to apply for outside funding in the first year. If you have a strong research proposal going in and think you are relatively strong at this task, you might think of that as a good opportunity to secure funding for the second year at a program you prefer. That's risky though. Lastly, don't forget to compare the cost of living where programs are located. I've heard that Madison is a moderately priced city. Rent prices there are definitely lower than the city I currently live in. I imagine that Evanston is fairly pricey. You've got great options! See you at Visit Day!

I'm really impressed with Indiana's program and very seriously considering accepting my offer there. There seems to be a lot of support in terms of faculty mentorship, as well as financially. I'm faced with deciding between Madison and Indiana though. This isn't going to be easy. I definitely plan on attending the visit day,

I don't see any updates on my account with Indiana. I need to remember where I stored my NETID for Madison, but it is possible that the person that reported a rejection called the department when he or she saw that others where getting news. Or, there might be people still under deliberation which the program has yet to notify. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

That was me. There was a small issue with the letter I initially received that leads me to believe that the bulk of offers may not have been released yet. Keep the faith, Darth!

They definitely sent out at least some, camillejl.

Not my post, but I got a notice, too. It was DGS.

Me. It's amazing to think I totally struck out last year. I'm floating.

I would just give the graduate secretary at each program a call. The GS at UT Austin is especially nice. I imagine that most others will also be happy to talk with you about the status of your application, and maybe even put whatever decision was made in context for you. It's a nerve wracking call at first, but I'm sure you will feel better afterward.

I'll echo econosocio's advice: apply to faculty in the department to which you are actually applying. You might be more interested in going outside of the department to get essential mentorship, but those people won't be evaluating you from a pile of other students. To be clear, I think it makes sense to look outside the department, but I have been advised to do so after admission. Know your audience.

It was totally out of hand, and many previous attempts failed because they were not drastic enough. I am not saying that I don’t think the attempt was an earnest one, although this particular monetary policy did accompany a period of privatization that political leaders exploited in very corrupt ways. Am I to understand that you believe that capitalism has always existed, that is tantamount to concepts like economic growth and technological innovation, and that Weber’s argument is really useless because there was no actual change in the social system of production? I’m not trying to say that Weber’s argument stands in every way, but you seem to discount it without acknowledging that it runs on a different tract than you understand things. Weber makes an argument for the cultural acceptance for different kind of economic system. You seem to be arguing that there is no need for a society to adopt new principles, narratives, values, practices, etc., as the fundamental behavior that supports capitalism is human nature and can be found in ancient societies. How do you propose to study social mores without studying meaning? Again, models are not reality. This can be helpful, but it also distorts understanding of the actual decisions that people make.

You seem to operating on the assumption that all things work in a rational way. I contend that this, and argue that things are moving toward more uniform order, but that logical order is not an intrinsic quality of all reality. Thus, I believe it is apt to speak of things as more or less rational. Machines are also the product of actual people, who are themselves products of their environments. So, there is a material element to the machines, both in terms of the actual material they made up of, as well as in terms of the historical process of energy transfers. I will also suggest that there is an existential element to what machines are. And people tend to live in societies. They do not come up with their ideas and manifest them as machines in isolation, but as a function of the transactional flows in which they are embedded. It’s just not that simple. The effect is not a singular one. I think you are correct in saying that technology “thinks” for people, but that is not all it does. Technology is not merely an extension of humanity. Each technology is a new object in existence, too. Thus, it is a new temporal means to an ends-in-view, which means it changes the feasible set before a given individual in a given circumstance. It also means that it will change how and when urges arise in people and cause them to act. So again, we are back to how people make decisions and whether or not a durable set of preferences guide people through their lives – the presence of technology changes people’s values, or at least prompts them to reconsider them in problematic situations. Your vision is too one dimensional on this front. Technology changes the very environment we exist in. It changes the terms of existence and places new demands on actors to learn those skills. It is a little too convenient that an intelligent person such as yourself can run with the assumption that technology only empowers people. We aren’t all equally equipped to make use of technologies, so technology may also create and recreate differences in society. It is an efficiency, yes, but you have to start looking at social reality through more lenses than that offered to you by economics. I don’t mean to say that I see technology as an evil, but it certainly isn’t as benign as you claim. And its effects are certainly more complicated than simply empowering people. Increased productivity is not always a positive for workers, for example. Our production systems produce in more standard ways, at more standard intervals, and demanding more standardized practices of workers. Following the definition that you’ve offered here, we can look at how food is produced, distributed, and consumed in modern life – if is produced in more standard ways (i.e. animals moved through an industrial production system), distributed in regular intervals and in standardized ways, and consumed by a population that is unfamiliar with the fact that the uniform slab of whatever is sitting before them used to be a particular organism n – a life process. No, it means that the material and social organization of society has become relatively more ordered according to the principle of rationality. People create systems, but systems tend to take on their own character in a way that does not reflect the initial ideal of the system. Bureaucracy is a pretty good example. Institutional power is distributed in positions occupied by real people who perform their duties off of a standardized script. One of the theorized benefits of this is reduced corruption. And yet, that is not all they do. Many believe bureaucracy is inefficient, or that the power should not be shielded from the democratic process. In systems science, they have a saying: the chief cause of problems is solutions.

Don't tempt me! I grew up in redneck country, in Northern California. We are supreme wrestlers.

The systems that people have to negotiate in everyday living have changed dramatically, gaining an increasingly rational character. This is a notion explored by many (Weber and Elias spring to mind immediately, as does Veblen) Certainly you would agree that the proliferation of technology and its incorporation into the work and personal lives of most citizens of advanced countries has been extensive. More of life is standardized and systematic and, as people are both products and producers of their environments, mental toolkits have evolved in relation to the increasingly standardized material and organizational life of modernity. When I say “technical expertise” I am referring to knowledge produced by credentialed agents within an occupational field. It is “expertise” in the sense that it reflects the dominant principle of organization (capital) in the field. In the case of economists, technical expertise is granted through successfully training at an academic institution. That training grants agents legitimacy in producing certain kinds of knowledge – knowledge about economic issues. Some examples of the connection of this expertise to the policies of governments and firms: Ben Bernanke and the Fed, need I say more? Also, and this is a case that I’m more familiar with, you could look at the role of economic advisors in the political economic history of Argentina. Raul Prebisch was instrumental in amping up a program of Import Substitution Industrialization (not only in Argentina). In the 90s, Domingo Cavallo constructed the “convertability” plan that tied the country’s currency to that of the U.S., which undermined Argentina’s export competitiveness and contributed to a massive financial meltdown. On the side of firms, economic analysis and forecast disseminated through media channels informs their business decisions. I would argue that economics as a field informs the training of businesspeople. MBAs are much more popular now. No, I was actually thinking of his writings on bureaucracy. I have heard critiques of the book based on inaccurate descriptions of the makeup and practices of certain countries that Weber mentions to establish the basis of his argument. I haven’t investigated those thoroughly, so cannot speak to the issue. However, having read the book, I do think that it is still of some import today. Weber’s core argument is that the dispositions and beliefs of Protestantism contributed to the formation of conditions favorable to capitalism as a social system of production and organization. I’m not sure his argument can be fully debunked with the revelation a couple new facts. Even if it can, he gave us a conceptual tool look at society. I’m not sure what argument the examples you offered support. I would certainly not claim that rational thinking and action, or pragmatic for that matter, is unique to our epoch. And I’m definitely willing to reconsider economic history. I would be interested in knowing how these histories have been shown to inaccurate in any way, but am skeptical that they have been shown as fully mythical. That sounds like a lot of fun and, as I’ve recently become interested in learning how to do network modeling and analysis, I would really love to see how this turns out. However, what’s the relevance to sociology? This sounds more like a badass linguistics project. True, he was a ruthless critic of Parson’s grand architecture. He was also a critic of those that studied methods. Looking beyond one’s milieu to find answers to questions of great significance for the day using whatever method(s) best fit the situation was his admonition. Also, as you may already be aware, Mills is tied to the Historical Institutional School, and Veblen specifically. Veblen was a student of Peirce. Dewey was a student of Veblen. The pragmatist stance that I have been advocating for can be seen in Mills’ approach. So, do you have a favored theory of practice? How do you explain supply and demand at the level of behavior?

And for the record, I don't consider this a fight. I take the opportunity to debate with a sharp and well-read person as a real privledge. Hell, I consider the opportunity to engage with any earnest person as a privledge. I had considered just staying away from this board, but I cannot help but feel like my ability to argue a point has diminished because of my current work in the applied research field -- my colleagues are weak in theory -- so I just had jump in.

Not really what I really intended to say. My point is more that the narratives people used to deliberate decision were in informed by a different set of beliefs. If you contend the concept that modern society is progressively more characterized by rational systems, accompanied by a greater acceptance of rational decision making processes and increased utility of technical expertise, I would love to hear a more detailed explanation as to why. And while you're at it, maybe you could tell me why Weber offers no useful insight in the sociological. I disagree that it is not useful. If I understand correctly, you would like to improve behavioral models to the point were they transfer across scale, geography, context, etc. I am doing a great deal of work now on trying to learn how mathematically derived models might further my understanding and ability to produce sociological knowledge, but I am most interested in engaging with precisely that which you find useless -- symbols. Maybe you can come with an equation as to why? Or maybe there are better approaches to understand how I might be viewed as a product of society contributing to reproducing social fields. That's not what I was alluding to. To be forthright, I am less than than eager to use the term "ideology." I think the term has fatigued with overuse and am currently looking into competing theories. In any case, I was really reffering to the growth and increased power of technocracy, particularly as it is constiuted in economic expertise. Whether this technocracy calls for freer markets or whether it recommends greater state regulation of market forces and agents was not a consideration in my previous statement. I am merely refering to the increased acceptance of technical knowledge produced within the discipline of economics or by actors whose credentials are drawn from their training in that discipline. Whether a set of beliefs that advocates for unrestrained markets is dominant among technical experts might be debatable. I don't think the increased influence of economists over the actions of government and private agents is really a question. I find it interesting that you feel is a real option to put on the back burner, so to speak. I am also 29. I have also done a great deal of self-examination. I guess I see consideration of the subject-object relationship as one of central importance to the fullness of explanation achieved in social analysis. This leads me to see the value in setting the object created in analysis against an earnest representation of the experiences which constitute its lived counterpart. This is a bit dramatic. Sociology deals with human meaning because it looks a human relations. This makes it necessarily tied to philosophy. This is why it is often referred to as a pseudo-science. You don’t have to engage in this type of work, but I would encourage you to consider how it might compliment your own. Again, there are different types of models to be built and tested, and this occurs in different ways. I meant to readdress the issue of rational behavior models in my earlier post. The pragmatist school of thought contests the notion that agents make decisions using a durable set or portfolio of preferences. This is because desires are stem from circumstances, and circumstances provide for a limited number of means to achieve a feasible set of possibilities. Identifying the most preferred outcome, then, is not a function of absolute values, but one of the means available in a situation. Cause flows from means to ends, and not the opposite. Not only this, but what we might refer to as “ends” when we look at a particular segment of behavior are really only ends-in-view, as they become means to other ends, which then become means themselves. So there is real continuity and a cumulative aspect to the way people behave. Some have come to capture this with the phrase: “a world of flows.” You really should consult the Whitford piece, as it better outlines the argument. But the point remains that there is a sophisticated argument against the decision making process assumed by all rationalist models.