Roll Call

[Humanomics]

The moderators of the Urch forum for economics applications start a thread every year called "Roll Call" where everyone posts their stats and prospective schools. Then acceptances get posted. It's an extremely useful way to measure one's chances. Is there a thread like it here? If not, the form on Urch goes:

Profile

Type of Undergrad:

Undergrad GPA:

Type of Grad:

Grad GPA:

GRE:

Math Courses: (not as relevant here?)

Other Courses:

Letters of Recommendation:

Research Experience:

Teaching Experience:

Research Interests:

SOP:

Concerns:

Applying To:

[splitends]

Guys, as someone who just went through this process last year (and admittedly who only discovered this site after I had applied and started hearing back from schools), this seems potentially immensely anxiety inducing while offering little constructive payoff. I'm not sure what the point is, other than trying to size up your competition (or possibly to brag?).

Maybe I'm missing something, but I would encourage you to not drive yourself crazy by trying to compare your "stats" this early in the game. This process is already strange and stressful enough, and it's arbitrary and unpredictable enough that you will inevitably all be surprised at some of the places you and others do and do not get in. So do what you want to do, but I don't think this is a great idea (though the last two questions seem reasonable..)

[ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid]

^ Couldn't have said it any better. I'm grateful I didn't get involved with this board as early as some of you are. I was a nervous wreck during application season.

I guess if you have super awesome stats and you just want to compare yourself to other people to make you feel better then I guess go for it but n the event you don't have the super duper all-star application you're likely to just stress yourself out.

[Karlito]

Good one splitends. The more I spent time on this board, the more stressed and desillusioned I got...Seriously. By the way, where did you end up splitends? I am curious. It went well for a lot of us, but it was horribly stressful. No need to add unnecessary competition on there by comparing yourself with the profiles people post online...and here is just a self selection of stressed out and overachieving people anyway - you won't be the best, I guarantee you. At best you will feel average - at worst you will feel like a crappy student

[Ladril]

Good one splitends. The more I spent time on this board, the more stressed and desillusioned I got...Seriously. By the way, where did you end up splitends? I am curious. It went well for a lot of us, but it was horribly stressful. No need to add unnecessary competition on there by comparing yourself with the profiles people post online...and here is just a self selection of stressed out and overachieving people anyway - you won't be the best, I guarantee you. At best you will feel average - at worst you will feel like a crappy student

Not to mention a lot of people with high GPAs and top GRE scores are going to be rejected from top programs anyway. If some people think these factors alone guarantee admission they are dead wrong.

[Karlito]

Yes the perspective of numbers only is very limited. But what can you expect from economists? (haha, condescendance and provocation of the qualitative sociologist inside)

[Humanomics]

The process is nerve-wracking regardless. Having a good idea of the mean credentials accruing to various ranks of programs helps one avoid making ridiculous errors in applying. The modal user on this forum seems to have relatively mature research interests and relationships with very helpful professors. Do not expect that the sample here is representative of the population.

Economics departments post absolute minimum standards for acceptance on their websites -- that gives one a lower bound and absolutely no insight into the mean or shape of distributions of various qualifications. The listing mechanism helps one look at a cross-section of the applying cohort more easily -- it's meant to be helpful guide for prospective students who are trying to build their credentials and not waste time and money applying to programs they have no chance at getting into.

I wonder if the suggestion wasn't met with immediate suspicion because there are numbers (gasp) and competition (falls down) involved, even more -- hierarchy (passes out). Economics admits and sociology admits alike suffer those demons. Everyone on here is talking about grades, GRE's, ranks, and application packages anyway. I was suggesting that proceed in some kind of tidy way, in addition to the more-textured discussion that's going on. Instead the effort seems to have been read as potentially corrupting simply because of my user name and that it's popular with economics applicants.

[Humanomics]

Not to mention a lot of people with high GPAs and top GRE scores are going to be rejected from top programs anyway. If some people think these factors alone guarantee admission they are dead wrong.

And I quote from the entire bottom half of the credentials list, which obviously take greater weight in sociology:

Other Courses:

Letters of Recommendation:

Research Experience:

Teaching Experience:

Research Interests:

SOP:

Concerns:

Applying To:

[Humanomics]

Guys, as someone who just went through this process last year (and admittedly who only discovered this site after I had applied and started hearing back from schools), this seems potentially immensely anxiety inducing while offering little constructive payoff. I'm not sure what the point is, other than trying to size up your competition (or possibly to brag?).

Maybe I'm missing something, but I would encourage you to not drive yourself crazy by trying to compare your "stats" this early in the game. This process is already strange and stressful enough, and it's arbitrary and unpredictable enough that you will inevitably all be surprised at some of the places you and others do and do not get in. So do what you want to do, but I don't think this is a great idea (though the last two questions seem reasonable..)

There is indeed an enormous amount of noise and randomness in this signaling process -- the listing of credentials is designed precisely to reduce this noise for applicants, who are the ones who possess dramatically less information than adcomms.

[Humanomics]

Yes the perspective of numbers only is very limited. But what can you expect from economists? (haha, condescendance and provocation of the qualitative sociologist inside)

That's cute, though presumably naive of the actual amount of numbers involved in economics (very few), and especially naive of the history of thought in social science that gives you such a sophomoric reading of 17th and 18th century political economy -- the origins of the numbers boogeyman you're concerned about (Re: Bentham on quantifiable, or cardinal utility, or Hume on positivism, or we could go back to Bacon).

To the degree economics uses statistics, it is no more a sinner than any other human science (though maybe sometimes less so, for requiring graduate students to understand the theory behind metrics before plunking around on STATA). Beyond stats (and increasingly since the 60's -- lab and field experiments), there are no numbers in economics, just lots of a priori pontificating -- a problem endemic to political science, sociology, and anthropology as well. The temptation away from scientifically rigorous empiricism is a big one, a snake economists are no-worse charmed by than runaway armchair theorists in any other discipline. Game theoretic proofs etc. are as useless as the 1,485th exegesis of Marx or Weber or Mead -- if we don't test these models. And frankly, that is what "qualitative" work gets criticized for, whether the theory is structural functionalism, intransitive aggregate voting preferences, or double-outcry auction design. No, just because a conversation proceeds in Greek notation rather than purposefully obfuscatory English doesn't make it "quantitative," as theorem/proof mathematics has almost nothing to do with numbers.

I suppose we could go on with a methodological debate, but considering you misapprehended my OP, and set up a straw man that my perspective was numbers-only (while more than half of the bullet points were qualitative questions), and considering you took a stupid, ad hominem cheap shot at economics without any warrant (while misspelling condescendence), I'm afraid you might not be prepared for that debate. Further comments are however welcome. Thanks.

Edited July 14, 2012 by Humanomics

[sciencegirl]

I don't think the issue has to do with numbers - but rather in the end, the process involves far more of a holistic interpretation of candidates than would be possible or efficient here. The only way to really reproduce it is if we all just uploaded our actual applications online for everyone to review themselves.. and then pretended to be the professors looking at them... and that's the only way we'd have a good sense of who might get in where and everyone's chances.

Splitends and I were in the same cycle this past year, and I am completely in agreement that the process is highly unpredictable - and posting up your stats to judge "chances" is really futile. The only predictability really is if you don't make a certain type of cutoff (like I think if you have below a 3.0 GPA and are shooting for a top-10, your chances are very low)... but at a certain threshold where you are a "competitive candidate", your chance of getting into a school is really 0% or 100%. It's up to that committee of 5-7 professors looking at your application and deciding if you have 0% or 100% of getting in. (Also, note that "competitive candidate" can really include over 100 applicants at a given program).

From my experience, plenty of people had "higher numbers" or "greater experience" somewhere on the list you posted, and then didn't get into the same top programs, or any at all (and then I also got rejected from programs ranked lower than ones I got into) -- so basically, don't take any of this personally, or think the process is a competition against other people in regards to your numbers and experience.

I will also add that the program I finally chose to attend, which I'd rather prefer to not state publicly, was one where I thought I had very little chance of getting into. And honestly, now that I can see the bigger picture of that specific admissions committee - and I've met with some of those faculty personally as an incoming student, I'm now realizing that luck, timing and application cycle played a huge role in my acceptance this last year. I most likely might not have been accepted to that same program if I were applying in another year with a different committee/different circumstances. (I'd be more than willing to share more details and my insight in PM if any of you have questions).

[Karlito]

That's cute, though presumably naive of the actual amount of numbers involved in economics (very few), and especially naive of the history of thought in social science that gives you such a sophomoric reading of 17th and 18th century political economy -- the origins of the numbers boogeyman you're concerned about (Re: Bentham on quantifiable, or cardinal utility, or Hume on positivism, or we could go back to Bacon).

To the degree economics uses statistics, it is no more a sinner than any other human science (though maybe sometimes less so, for requiring graduate students to understand the theory behind metrics before plunking around on STATA). Beyond stats (and increasingly since the 60's -- lab and field experiments), there are no numbers in economics, just lots of a priori pontificating -- a problem endemic to political science, sociology, and anthropology as well. The temptation away from scientifically rigorous empiricism is a big one, a snake economists are no-worse charmed by than runaway armchair theorists in any other discipline. Game theoretic proofs etc. are as useless as the 1,485th exegesis of Marx or Weber or Mead -- if we don't test these models. And frankly, that is what "qualitative" work gets criticized for, whether the theory is structural functionalism, intransitive aggregate voting preferences, or double-outcry auction design. No, just because a conversation proceeds in Greek notation rather than purposefully obfuscatory English doesn't make it "quantitative," as theorem/proof mathematics has almost nothing to do with numbers.

I suppose we could go on with a methodological debate, but considering you misapprehended my OP, and set up a straw man that my perspective was numbers-only (while more than half of the bullet points were qualitative questions), and considering you took a stupid, ad hominem cheap shot at economics without any warrant (while misspelling condescendence), I'm afraid you might not be prepared for that debate. Further comments are however welcome. Thanks.

Thanks for the lecture. You'll excuse me for the misspelling of "condescendence" (something you sure seem to know quite well), as I learned English in high school and yes, still make a few mistakes. As for my message, it was intended as a joke on the antagonisms that cross the discipline, especially the eternal debate about the "rigor" of quant methods against the "level of meaning" provided by qual. methods. Take it easy, this is just a forum.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Karlito

[splitends]

OK, with three extensive back-to-back snarky responses two months after the conversation died, it's hard to tell if you're just trolling or if you legitimately have a giant chip on your shoulder about this. Dude, chill. It's nothing personal. It was sincere advice from people who have just gone through this experience and want to help next year's anxiety ridden applicants-to-be avoid some obvious pitfalls. I legitimately think this is a questionable way to go about passing time before applying to schools, and I have no doubt that it's a terrible way to assess your competitiveness for any given program or for graduate school in general.

I'm not sure why you think it has anything to do with methodological antagonisms between different braches of the discipline-- the problem was never that you weren't using "qualitative" methods to collect data. This was never an appropriate way to collect data about where you should apply for so many reasons, but most basically because the sample would be ridiculous. At best this was an invitation for people to connect and geek out about grad school with other people who are in the same crazy head space as they are (which I personally think is the real motivation behind a lot of activity on this site anyway), and perhaps to get a little reassurance, but in a way that I strongly suspect will (unintentionally) create more anxiety than anything else. At worst this was an invitation to a pissing contest.

If you're legitimately confused about whether or not you should apply to a particular program, I would strongly suggest talking to a trusted professor about it. If you want a second opinion, are coming in from a different discipline and don't have close profs in SOC, etc, then yes it makes sense to ask about it here. But don't pretend this particular survey is a good general use tool for people seeking to reduce the noise and confusion of grad schools admissions. And please, please, please don't invoke names like Bentham or Bacon, or use words like "exegesis" or "obfuscatory" to try and make yourself look smart in place of having an actual argument. It just makes you look like a jackass.

[Humanomics]

\

Thanks for the lecture. You'll excuse me for the misspelling of "condescendence" (something you sure seem to know quite well), as I learned English in high school and yes, still make a few mistakes. As for my message, it was intended as a joke on the antagonisms that cross the discipline, especially the eternal debate about the "rigor" of quant methods against the "level of meaning" provided by qual. methods. Take it easy, this is just a forum.

I dropped out of one high-school and got kicked out of the next.

Your joke was a piggy-back on Ladril first alleging that the profile information I suggested was only or even mostly quantitative, and then insinuating that I was "dead-wrong." Set all of that against the larger background where cross-talk between the disciplines is actively discouraged by senior scholars in both disciplines, hung up on the political/welfare/normative implications of structural models v. rational choice models, where sneering gets passed off as a scientific standard, and I missed the humor. Nothing in your comment indicated that you were trying to laugh with, and not at me.

[Humanomics]

OK, with three extensive back-to-back snarky responses two months after the conversation died, it's hard to tell if you're just trolling or if you legitimately have a giant chip on your shoulder about this. Dude, chill. It's nothing personal. It was sincere advice from people who have just gone through this experience and want to help next year's anxiety ridden applicants-to-be avoid some obvious pitfalls. I legitimately think this is a questionable way to go about passing time before applying to schools, and I have no doubt that it's a terrible way to assess your competitiveness for any given program or for graduate school in general.

I'm not sure why you think it has anything to do with methodological antagonisms between different braches of the discipline-- the problem was never that you weren't using "qualitative" methods to collect data. This was never an appropriate way to collect data about where you should apply for so many reasons, but most basically because the sample would be ridiculous. At best this was an invitation for people to connect and geek out about grad school with other people who are in the same crazy head space as they are (which I personally think is the real motivation behind a lot of activity on this site anyway), and perhaps to get a little reassurance, but in a way that I strongly suspect will (unintentionally) create more anxiety than anything else. At worst this was an invitation to a pissing contest.

If you're legitimately confused about whether or not you should apply to a particular program, I would strongly suggest talking to a trusted professor about it. If you want a second opinion, are coming in from a different discipline and don't have close profs in SOC, etc, then yes it makes sense to ask about it here. But don't pretend this particular survey is a good general use tool for people seeking to reduce the noise and confusion of grad schools admissions. And please, please, please don't invoke names like Bentham or Bacon, or use words like "exegesis" or "obfuscatory" to try and make yourself look smart in place of having an actual argument. It just makes you look like a jackass.

I wrote a long reply, but lost it to a refresh -- you're disappointed I'm sure. I'm not a troll, or a jackass. I defended my OP, which I posted in a spirit of generosity and camaraderie, because the idea was attacked as ego-pissing, useless, quantitative nonsense. Review the thread if you're "not sure why think it has anything to do with [the various concerns I replied to]."

Roll Call is extremely helpful at Urch, and does nothing but promote an extremely useful and generous exercise where motivated candidates agglomerate the wisdom they've collected individually, and where graduate students actually go out of their way to stay on and give people advice. Yes, if I'm going to apply to a program I would like to know what the competition looks like. http://www.urch.com/.../phd-economics/

I read the people and topics I cite, and my argument is that theory is often purposefully oblique and irrelevant in all social sciences, that in fact that's what economics suffers from methodologically when it uses lots of Greek notation and calls doing so rigor. "Quantitative" work is a mistaken way to talk about mathematical economics, because theorem/proof mathematical economics does not measure anything -- it answers existential questions, i.e. "Does an equilibrium of supply and demand functions exist given XYZ conditions." That's a philosophical exercise, just like symbolic-proving in the phil department. It's a priori, and just as annoying to learn to read and irrelevant to answering most social questions as going back over classical texts for the 8 millionth time. Anyway, the point in this context was to one-up the two, out of five posters who claimed I was numbers-focused because of my background. Economics has very little to do with numbers. Maybe you didn't understand my argument -- but your lack of erudition on methodology and history of thought in social science doesn't give you the right to accuse me of making vapid, name-dropping posts just to troll around.

Edited July 17, 2012 by Humanomics

[ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid]

[splitends]

Well, Sociology PhD programs are notoriously open to non-soc undergraduate majors. I wouldn't worry for a second that your economics background puts you at a disadvantage per se. As long as you demonstrate an ability to think sociologically, then programs don't generally reward or penalize people for coming from one academic background or another.

Speaking directly to your first concern: economic sociologists don't think of their field as some place people end up if they don't know how to do math-- they think they have legitimate alternative (and they would probably argue superior) models for understanding the economic world, so I wouldn't worry about looking like a spillover candidate either.

As for your third concern, based on anecdotal observation of who I met visiting top schools, plenty of people get into top SOC PhD programs without Master's degrees, and I think publications are still icing on the cake rather than strictly necessary to be competitive. What they're looking for in all of it is that you have the potential to be a great sociologist, which means that you've shown you can think creatively about interesting problems, and that the problems you want to address can and should be addressed with the support of the faculty in that particular department. You don't have to come in knowing everything about the subfield you're interested in or the methods you want to use-- that's why you spend all that time doing coursework and etc.

Anyway, good luck with apps. And maybe this is forcing too much into one post, but seriously-- if you want to make a point on here in the future, you can do so without being so venomous. I like the idea of this being a place where people can go for advice and support in what is almost inevitably going to be a very difficult process. I know you feel slighted by some of the comments people made about economists, but your reactions don't really sound like sincere attempts at dialogue or even just honest retorts-- it makes you sound like a bully, which nobody needs right now. There's really never a need for that.

[Humanomics]

@splitends

Your initial response to my post was relatively innocuous, though you did suggest that I might just be trying to brag. The following posts were increasingly flip and ad hominem. First there was an elaboration on your bragging suggestion. Then there was a misreading about me being all about the numbers, and in turn "dead wrong." Then a nice careless joke to top things off.

Yes, I'm going to get angry when five people jump all over something I say to try and help, insinuating all this garbage about my intentions and focus. I'm up to speed on netiquette: I took a condescending, polemical tone when I was angry -- that's the tradition in the academy when one feels attacked on grounds of his intentions and credentials.

Frankly I spend most of my time on economics boards defending you guys, and am one of the only young, aspiring economists with enough stones to come out and say I take models of behavior outside Price Theory seriously (though I take Price Theory very seriously). Most of these kids feel like doing so is career suicide. They're not entirely incorrect. The idea that I have some kind of chip on my shoulder towards sociological thinking and disciplinary proceeding that I brought to this board is just insane.

I have better things to do than troll, and brag about my penny-ante undergraduate credentials to strangers. I was looking for help, and trying to help, and got railroaded with a bunch of flip and offensive comments. The four of you insinuating that I am or might be a braggart, or naive because of my training, was not a "sincere attempt at dialogue or just honest retort." Should I have replied in kind that you guys might just be pansies who can't handle some competition, which is indicative of the limp nature of sociological training? That would be the reverse set of suspicious, presumptuous, loaded ad hominems. No, instead I argued, rather maturely considering the ridiculous insinuations coming across the table, my defense with warrants about where I in fact am coming from methodologically, and what I had focused on in my OP.

Had I shown up on here blasting your board with posts about what a bunch of retarded sociologians you guys are (which you of course, aren't), you might have a point that I have been bullying and trolling.

A common criticism of economics is that it promotes capitalism, therefore promoting egoism and individualism, and that it makes such loony normative recommendations because it's numerical, mechanical, and inhumane in its scientific methods. You might imagine how I could thus read that critique from being told my post was an attempt at egoistic bragging, and ill-informed by economic methods.

Most economic sociologists don't see economic sociology (unless in Marxian form) as an alternative to Price Theory. They see the embeddedness of preferences in cultural fabric as an addition to price theoretic models, which hold preference-changes constant, not a superior alternative. Lots of the work on collective action assumes purposive, forward-looking agents who calculate costs and benefits, just like economics does. My concerns are obviously sub-field specific, and probably best served elsewhere.

Thanks for everyone's time.

[splitends]

OK...I probably shouldn't reply at this point, but whatevs. I get the feeling that you're conflating one on one interactions between individuals studying sociology and individuals studying economics in this one tiny arena with larger antagonisms or debates between the disciplines, and you seem to be bringing all the ire you have in the one arena into the other. As a result, I think you're reading a bit too much into people insinuating "all this garbage about my intentions and focus."

Case in point: in my initial post, I never said (and didn't think) that you were ever personally suggesting this as a forum where you could personally brag. I got the feeling it was well intentioned on your part, but that other as yet to be determined anonymous citizens of the internet might be attracted to it as an opportunity for a pissing contest, which I don't think would be helpful to anyone. But you seemed to take it as a personal attack.

Then someone made a totally innocuous, kind of lame, but completely sideline comment about preferring qualitative methods (which I don't think was ever the brunt of anyone's argument against doing the survey-- the notes of caution were really more about this being a stressful process that is super hard to predict, because it does really draw on a holistic review of applications and ultimately on arbitrary decisions between otherwise similarly qualified applicants) and you reacted with angry polemics about methodological issues within the discipline and with personal attacks on others. As far as reactions go, it was a bit of of an overkill. Especially a whole series of them...two months after people had stopped commenting on this forum. Seemed a little, well, needlessly angry...

And you're whole "Oh, I don't think you're ready for this debate" orgy of name dropping? That was bullying. I'm not saying you haven't read those works or that underneath it you don't know what you're talking about--you certainly sound like you do-- but I am saying it was a complete bullying cliche: communicating your ideas in a way that attempts to make others look foolish while you look smart, a way of disempowering your reader by invoking obscure references that people probably don't know (don't really need to know at this stage) rather than relying on the thrust of your argument alone to make a point. It's entirely possible that you were serious in all that, but it makes you look like the douchey guy with the ponytail from the bar scene in Good Will Hunting.

As for the bit about economic sociologists...admittedly, I'm pretty new to this, but I am studying economic sociology at one of the top programs in the country, and I can assure you that no one in the department sits around thinking "If only I had been good at math, then I could have been an economist!" Economic sociology really does attempt to construct alternative models and analytic tools for making sense of the economic world (and I'm definitely not talking about just Marxists here...), not just supplement what economists have to say. Who have you been reading that you think it's otherwise?

Just to be clear, that's not a rhetorical question-- I'm legitimately curious. Look: I think you overreated a bit to people's comments, and I think you were meaner than you needed to be (I have zero patience for bullying), but you do seem like a smart and passionate person and I don't think there's any reason that (if you tone down the anger a bit...) you can't get useful things out of this forum.

So (assuming you're interested in more than just a flame war here) who are you interested in, in the world of economic soc? Which programs are you looking at?

[Humanomics]

Pony Tail plagiarized some Marxist historian (which most of them are, or at least Polanyian hence economic history had to become its own subdiscipline of economics under auspice of the economics department). So if anyone was mindlessly taking cues from literature he'd read or whispers he'd heard around the department, it was Karlito. I couldn't write with high-school senior grammar when I came to college. Don't compare me to a Harvard snuff. Anyway, let's just leave Karlito out of this -- he made a stupid crack, admitted it, and made no claim to have any basis for the crack. I think I've more than sufficiently made my point concerning his (maybe in his mind playful) attack.

Look man, most people's readings of economics whom haven't studied it, yes most undergraduates from social science programs outside the economics program, are taught a Marxian reading of Price Theory. Would you say a majority of sociology undergraduates don't think capitalism engenders selfish behavior, or that economics doesn't systematize that hegemon? Frankly I'm surprised nobody made any cracks about the imperialism of rational choice (ala Ben Fine et. al.) while they were at it. Anyway, I don't give a crap if anyone thinks I was being oversensitive. I'm a nice person -- go over to Urch and look at my posts on the economics PhD forum.

Anyone even glancingly interested in the phil of science debate over utility theory and rational choice should know who Jeremy Bentham is, or at least understand how and why counting things got popular on the wave of scientific positivism descended from Hume, Bacon, and Kant. You don't just get to read Marx, Weber, Boas, Simmel, Levi-Strauss . . . and then the postmodern or post-structuralist criticisms of those guys like Foucault as an undergrad, and run around as if you know something about the methodology of economics because you read an Adbusters special issue on it once. Or if one isn't that learned in the first-principles of her own discipline (sociology), having read a couple truncated Goffman and Mill essays in a second-year reader doesn't qualify you to say, well anything really.

There are roughly two camps out to try and kick price theory in the knees (Price theory is the correct name for what you know as "neoclassical economics" neoclassical is a historically incorrect term, because Austrians and other now-considered "heterodox" economists helped developed the constrained optimization program. The theory of Price codified in the 1960's at Chicago -- the foundation being that preferences do not matter, or change, and that all behavior comes from agents reacting to fluctuations in the relative prices they face). The first camp would be the journalistic/Occupy/man-in-the-street camp. This crew got a jolt during 2008, but their arguments are old hat "economic models don't look like the real world (neither does a styrofoam model of the solar system, exactly)" "people aren't selfish" blah blah. Then there are legitimate heterodox economists like Steve Keen who really go in and try to level economic theory completely. It's a silly program either way you slice it. Behavioral, evolutionary, Shumpeterian, complex systems, and institutional economists have always tried to come up with addenda to the results of supply and demand, in order to alight empirical situations supply and demand fail to predict well (the standard model succeeds in a variety of situations -- those results aren't going away). And economic sociologists have fallen largely into this camp, giving a nod to the results of price theory.

Embeddedness or other cultural-variable arguments are no replacements for price theory, because they merely argue where individual agent's preferences come from -- economics attempts to say nothing about where preferences come from. They are explicitly defined as a given, as manna, from the first chapter of an intermediate microeconomics textbook. We hold preferences constant, and vary prices and budgets -- that tells you where someone's going to vote at the margin.

The major split between economics and sociology would be the degree to which one presupposes the agency of the individual. The traditional analysis in sociology is structural - individuals are mere social constructions, and will behave deterministically per the guide of social structures. The traditional analysis in economics is of methodological individuals. Economics takes almost a Hobbesian sovereignty of the individual for granted. The reality is that people often times take social norms and structures as a given and just follow along -- indeed that is what rational choice predicts people will do, as it's too computationally expensive to sit there and contemplate the costs and benefits of every decision as a rational choice model would suggest (Simon, Stigler, Gigerenzer, etc.). Mead and the symbolic interactionists try to strike a nice balance here, attempting to show how purposive, thoughtful people might construct, in the first, the social constructions they're otherwise beholden to. Network, complexity, and game theory are developing (incidentally, as there is little citation or tie in) a mathematical treatment of this approach.
Economics treats preferences as a given -- that's a problem, not having any story of how people develop their tastes. Welp, sociology usually treats preferences as a given too, whether given by some hard-to-identify hegemon, an ideological or material dialectic, the power elite, or some other unmeasurable, philosophical boogeyman. Anyway, the point is that the models we're taught as undergraduates, as codified, coherent, received wisdom of the discipline, all came from a critical historical debate over how to figure out where a price comes from, why people prefer apples to oranges, etc. Most all perspectives are useful compliments of one another, not alternatives to one another, and have been mostly treated as such by scholars who read in both traditions. That reading, unfortunately is rare, and the undergraduate impression on both sides of the isle thus is "those dumbfucks over there don't know what the hell they're talking about and aren't real scientists."

Mancur Olson's work on collective action assumes rational agents, as does most all of critical mass theory (Rogett, Marwel, and Oliver). Mark Granovetter is largely sympathetic to markets, and his strength of weak ties work poses no alternative to price theoretic labor economics -- indeed much of labor economics imported Granvetter's work, and anyway is one of the strongest alter-ers of the traditional research program, in searching for explanations for unemployment (in frictionless factor markets there should be no unemployment, theoretically). Zelizner's work on the insurance industry serves as a nice compliment to economics, showcasing how an object goes from not a commodity to a commodity (note that fears of neoliberal "commodification" are empirically baseless, as economic growth in fact relies on technological innovation to create new products, processes, and services to buy and sell -- not the steady encroaching on an already-fixed pie of sacred objects in the world). This is my impression from a preliminary reading of seminal economic sociologists. Their foundational antecedents like Simmel, Weber, and Marx were never specifically focused on proffering an alternative to market-approving classical and marginalist economics.
 

Removed at Users Request.

[splitends]

Look...I should have stopped engaging in this conversation a while back, because it doesn't seem to be going anywhere productive. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in bed sick at the moment and somehow a downward spiral of an internet argument seems like as good a way to pass the time as any.

This is what I mean when I say you sound like a bully, reminiscent of our pony-tailed friend: "Pony Tail plagiarized some Marxist historian (which most of them are, or at least Polanyian hence economic history had to become its own subdiscipline of economics under auspice of the economics department)." Throwing in your mini-lecture on economic history did nothing to further your point. Like most of this post, it doesn't seem to serve any purpose but to display to the world how smart you are. It doesn't respond to a question posed; it doesn't add to your argument; it doesn't advance any larger point-- it just seems to be thrown in there to show off. While I recognize that the content of ponytail's attempt to puff himself up while belittling others and yours are different, the tactic is the same.

Anyway, you've taken this discussion way off point, but while we're out here on this ledge, I think a lot of things you're throwing out there as fact are at best debatable. I think it's probably a gross overgeneralization to say that "The major split between economics and sociology would be the degree to which one presupposes the agency of the individual." The disciplines take entirely different subjects as their units of analysis. I would say that the "major split" is a lot more fundamental than that. And I really do think the people you're listing here, especially Zelizer (note spelling there) can be read as part of an alternative sociological understanding of markets rather than as compliments to price theory. I highly suggest you look into Fligstein's Architecture of Markets to get the bigger picture there.

Also, I've only taken a few courses that touch on the subject, but from what I understand [prior to the public health revolution] ploughing with your own hands, starving in spring, freezing in winter, and dying at 30 was a hell of a lot better than what would happen to you in industrial centers...

Alright, I'm officially signing off of this conversation. I hope at some point some of this got through to you. It feels like I've been talking right past (writing right past?) you for a while now. I'm not saying at all that you're not smart or don't know what you're talking about (though now that I've read this last bit I do think you still have to read more about what Sociologists have to say about the economy to really get what a big chunk of economic sociology is about) but I am saying that you do sound like you have a giant chip on your shoulder, which makes it hard to communicate. It looks like the programs you're interested in are largely ones I got into last year, so if you are interested in talking or concerned about how your SOC apps should differ from econ ones and not just going back and forth like this, feel free to PM me. Good luck.

[Karlito]

Wow. All that because of my silly joke? I did not read the whole thing. Maybe it's time to close this thread. Humanomics, I will be in a department with strong econ soc next year so you can always pm me if you need info or anything, I won't bite you (or "attack" you again, I promise). No hard feelings, and good luck

[Humanomics]

The comment about Marxian history was intended as a comment on Marxian history, nothing more. Lots of Marxian history is written without reverence to empirical facts -- Polanyi is a great example -- or rather Marx would be even better, as his German romantic reading of history he did from an armchair, and his review of factory life too (he never stepped foot in one). I thought it was germane to mention to an aspiring economic sociologist who might not have read any economic historians: economic historians are in widespread agreement on the point that Marxian histories are wrong. Markets are ancient. We can discuss this further if you're interested. I thought you might be interested, which is why I mentioned it -- it was an aside, yes.

You asked me to elaborate on my views on the intersection of economic sociology and economics proper. I did that. How is that me just showboating, or especially taking things "way off point?" You asked me to go off topic of the Roll Call debate.

"The disciplines take entirely different subjects as their units of analysis."

That is incorrect. Major sub-disciplines of economics, complete with conferences and field journals and graduate field courses, include: economic demography (population, family), economic religion, urban economics (race, real estate, etc), development economics, growth (source of value debate), public choice theory (economics of government), economic history, economics of technology and innovation, and the economics of education.

"Also, I've only taken a few courses that touch on the subject, but from what I understand [prior to the public health revolution] ploughing with your own hands, starving in spring, freezing in winter, and dying at 30 was a hell of a lot better than what would happen to you in industrial centers"

Cities were filthy, yes. The streets were paved-over completely with horse manure, which created particulate that lingered in the air at all times. Add to that wood-burning stoves, and you've got quite a mess of air and ground pollution. And people still flocked to them because of the income differentials generated by technological improvement, making urban workers more productive than rural counterparts. This is the secular trend of economic growth: one of the gentlemen interviewed during the big rouse over Apple factories reported that he earned in one day what he would have in one month at home. Multiply your stipend by thirty to get some idea of the incentives rural Chinese face, and which rural English and Dutch faced whence flocking to cities during the Industrial Revolution.

But you're right: I have a lot more economic sociology to read before I'm qualified to comment at length on the discipline's movements. My point was that less of this work does, or should serve as a substitute to price theory, than some might hope. The results of price theory have been incredibly robust -- that doesn't mean, as most economists might hope, that price theory can explain any and every human behavior. It means we ought to come up with a more complete story of societies, by measuring where price theoretic models fit, and where e.g. cultural models fit. Virgil Storr's forthcoming book on the economics of culture is great.

I thought we'd dropped the boohoo-ing (on both sides) and moved on to a scholarly discussion about economics and economic sociology, but since you insist on suggesting I'm some kind of bully with a chip on my shoulder, I'll address it. The first three paragraphs are the only condescending ones from that last post, and their thesis is that someone who hasn't read thoroughly in a discipline doesn't have a foundation to criticize it from. Maybe it wasn't clear what I was responding to -- you had said something about how my references to Bentham and Bacon were obscure and unnecessary. No, they're not nearly obscure in the foundations of social thought, and are entirely necessary to discuss positivism and quantification in social science. You saw, correctly, that i don't have an extremely wide reading in modern economic sociology. Hence I'm not critical of it (though extremely interested). Yet lots and lots of people take liberty to criticize economics without knowing how a supply and demand graph works. I've read some Simmel, and Levi-Strauss, and Granovetter, etc. That is more than we can say for 99% of economics grad students or especially econ undergrads, man. So the point of those three paragraphs was: "I read in sociology and attempt to understand it, and make room for it in my view of phenomena. I don't criticize and dismiss it ignorantly, or crack jokes about it. And no one has the right to do so about economics without knowing how economics proceeds."

Maybe I'm naive of customary tone and decorum in the sociology department, but a little bit of bite and condescension seem like the norm to me in most academic comment. And especially when someone feels personally attacked. I felt personally attacked at first. I don't anymore. I'm sorry I pissed on what everyone said -- I felt summarily pissed on by the five comments that followed my OP. I'm not a bully; I don't have a chip on my shoulder. I came here trying to help the forum and myself, to contribute. All I study in economics is cooperation, norms and conventions, welfare questions, preferences, and any number of other concerns that sociology has chiefly taken up in the last 100 years. I didn't come here to masturbate in front of everyone. I came here because one of my long term goals is to build dialogue between economics and sociology -- hence the argument that it's wiser to look for compliments in theory rather than substitutes. The economics forum is very cordial, and extremely helpful. The Roll Call thread is a big part of that. If you don't believe that, fine. Can we drop it and talk about something that actually matters? I'm really tired of being accused of being an asshole every time I try to move this conversation to methodological, philosophy of science, or history of thought debate.

Educate me, then. What is the sociological view of markets? What are the units of analysis in sociology that are so markedly different from those in economics? How do Zelizer et. al. have useful alternatives to price theory? There is a theory of price in sociology outside the labor theory of value? Where do sociologists think price comes from? I'll read what you recommended. Thank you.

Edited July 18, 2012 by Humanomics