Illusio80

Good luck! Huh, I thought Thick Description and the one on the Balinese Cockfight were beautifully written. If you think Geertz is a bad writer somehow, try Garfinkel or Bourdieu. I actually also like Ward Goodenough, whom Geertz attacks.

Sounds like (perhaps unsurprisingly) there are lots of culture folks out there. I thought we could use our own hangout. So, which is it, sociology of culture, or cultural sociology? Choose carefully...

Are you some kind of spy? LOL With your interests... is Alejandro Baer on your wish list?

Click on the Results tab at the top. People post acceptances and rejections there anonymously. I'm old school, it's Alka Seltzer for me. :-)

Nice job on the GRE, that should turn a few heads!

If you are basing this off of sociologists like Loic Wacquant and Gail Kligman, then yeah, sociological ethnographers are just like anthropologists. But I think Mitchell Duneier, Jack Katz, and Elijah Anderson, for example, have a much different style from mainstream anthropology. For one thing, they are way more subtle / light about theory than the average anthropologist. I would not say that Foucault is a mainstream theorist in sociology. Postmodernism in general does not fly. Bourdieu is not widely cited by the latter group either. Most of them base their work on Georg Simmel. Goffman, sure, he is commonly cited. Anthropology has the whole rich European tradition of structuralism and late Durkheim. I realize that has waned somewhat and now pomo and Marxist stuff is really common. Marxism you will find aplenty in sociology but not pomo for the most part.

I have a minor in anthropology and enjoyed it immensely. I also draw on anthropological theorists in doing sociology. Anthropology and sociology share the same base of classical social theory (Marx, Weber, Durkheim) but otherwise have a lot of differences. Sociocultural anthropology is based largely on ethnography. There is a strong tradition of ethnography in sociology, but the writing is largely very different. Most of it is derived from the "Chicago School" and the symbolic interactionists and has a certain flavor. Anthropology has a sweeping scope but tends to have kind of a micro focus, whereas the sky is the limit in sociology. In sociology there is everything from the study of two people talking, to the study of world empires (in some prominent cases, both within the same department.) I have chosen sociology because of the topical and methodological freedom, and because more macro cultural studies appeal to me.

Now I read parts of your post more closely, so I'm posting again. I think you should read widely in sociology and social history to learn for yourself what the difference is and which is more appealing to you. And if the answer is sociology, you should go ahead and apply to departments that invite applications from people of all disciplinary backgrounds. You'll catch up during the first year. It's way more efficient, and probably cheaper, to bite off the PhD at once than to pursue a stand alone MA. (Unless you're in Canada or the UK, where the masters is always separate from the PhD.)

In a sociology PhD program they are going to make you do at least two quarters or a year of stats. Depending on the department, you may be free to use the stats in your work or not use it. The program I used to be in had optional advanced stats for after the basic sequence, as well as various qualitative and quantitative methods sequences. I strongly urge you to take the methods sequence that is of most interest to you in the first year, if that is how your program is structured. You will need it to draw from in the process of writing whatever MA requirement there is. In my experience, methods training is far more important early on than topical seminars, because once you hit the second year, you are pretty much on your own in terms of coming up with a substantial paper, and it would be helpful to be able to follow some kind of standard procedure, whatever that may be, so you have a somewhat smaller chance of getting laughed out of the room. The MA is not the time for avant garde experimentation, I found out. Devise something doable, crank it through the methodological sausage grinder of your choice, present the results, and be done with it. It all goes way faster than you could believe. People were telling me first year to chill out, that I had plenty of time to worry about a project. I thought they were wrong at the time, and now I know just how wrong they were. Assuming your program has some kind of MA thesis, start thinking about it as soon as you can. Ideally, spin it off one of your seminar papers. Try to select a committee that is going to actually help you when you need it. (Judging this can be easier said than done.) Good luck and feel free to follow up with questions!

Thank you. As I said, for me, I don't know what that other life looks like, but I do suppose it's there.

Speaking of wine, I am enjoying a nice glass of Lalande de Pomerol and doing my own best not to freak out. Wishing all of you success!

My relationship with sociology has been a long odyssey. I am looking at things differently this time in a number of ways. I am shooting "lower," on average, this time because last time I got annihilated by applying only to top 20 departments. But really, this time I have applied to every school that I honestly thought was a great fit for me. It's possible that I won't get a tenure-track job in the end, just like that possibility exists for every one of you, but it's a certainty that I won't get a job in academia if I don't get in anywhere. As far as the anxiety goes, I've already had opportunities to come to terms with that. It's a bit like facing your mortality. I think you can only really live once you swallow the fact that you will certainly die, and likewise, that you may not get in anywhere. I'm still not sure what another career is for me. In that sense I am very invested in this winter's results. However, I am so far doing a lot better psychologically than last time. Culture, theory, politics -- represent!

Is this directed at me or Inatj?

If you are shooting high, I would add Princeton, where Viviana Zelizer and Robert Wuthnow will still be sympathetic to a cognitive approach to culture. Paul DiMaggio has since moved to NYU, which you have probably noted. Also give a look to John Levi Martin at Chicago, who is a cognitivist and quite the intellectual. To my knowledge, the people at Albany, especially Ron Jacobs, take more of a Strong Program approach than a cognitive one. I like both approaches, so I will join you in applying to Albany. Good luck!! Ann Swidler at Berkeley is also generally in the cognitive / practice theory type camp. Also Omar Lizardo and Ann Mische at Notre Dame.

Minnesota has an excellent concentration in Crime, Law, and Deviance.

Some of the University of California campuses such as Berkeley, San Diego, Santa Cruz, and Santa Barbara have very strong qualitative areas. Some other schools that come to mind are Northwestern, Emory, and Rutgers, but there are good qualitative people in many places, so it depends on your specific interests. I would say that Wisconsin, Washington-Seattle, North Carolina, and Cornell are more heavily quantitative focused, among other places.

Have you considered a masters/PhD in public policy? I thought there was a consortium of public policy schools, but I can't find the website just now.

I suspect that someone really interested in language (holistically) might be better off in linguistic anthropology or linguistics. UCLA Sociology still has three conversation analysts by my count, but I don't see a lot of evidence of other linguistic activity, whatever that might be. Steve Clayman and John Heritage list "Language/Social Linguistics" but I think that is their way of saying conversation analysis.

You were able to state all of that in a few sentences, so it seems like a good start. If you can integrate data, method, and theory in a single statement, so much the better.

Princeton has been a really good department over the years, but some of their people are getting older and retiring, and some have left. Who interests you there?

I think you've made some good choices. Maybe look at Minnesota and Berkeley too. Minnesota is very strong in Crime, Law, and Deviance, and Race/Ethnicity. Your interests also make me think of Wacquant at Berkeley. There are probably more out there, but those are my suggestions.

Check this out: http://www.csun.edu/~hbsoc126/emotions/

Yes Yale, but also look at Jeffrey Guhin at UCLA for the culture/education combo. I'll let you know if I think of anyone else. Also, you might want to throw in a safety school. LOL. Best of luck with the range you've selected. You probably have killer GRE scores. EDIT: I guess I misread your post. But look at UCLA anyway for Jeffrey Guhin and Rebecca Emigh among others.

Check out Rutgers. They are strong in culture and I think there's at least one guy doing environmental stuff.

Give UC Berkeley a good look. You might want to give the GRE another shot. Your scores are close to mine, and I'm having a rough time of it with sociology programs right now.