Which U.S. state/city is friendly towards sociologists?

[herbertmarcuse]

I've often pondered about this.Still, I would like to hear your input:

Which U.S. state/city is friendly towards sociologists?

Here is my short list:

Seattle/ Washington

Santa Cruz/CA

Eugene Oregon

Berkeley/ CA

Madison Wisconisn

[allhandsonthebadone]

How would you define "friendly toward sociologists?" I can't imagine any place antagonistic to them...

[herbertmarcuse]

For me, non-friendly states usually means the following:

1)precarious employment and few long-term career chances for sociologists in the economy.

2)minimal funding or limited support by the state for Sociology graduate students and Sociology Departments.

3)political and ideological hostility towards the entire subject of Sociology in the economy.

To be sure, there are plenty more ways one could describe a state or place that is non-friendly towards sociologists.For example, about 8 years ago I was able to do my Masters degree in Sweden and was amazed with the amount of funding that generally goes into Sociology departments there. Some of this has to do with a more friendliness towards sociologists and the willingness to fund the subject. I guess it also may have to do with the amount of political and social support for sociologists to be employed and seen as equals.

[splitends]

Based on what I've heard from European professors, Europe in general and Scandinavia in particular are much more likely to take Sociology more seriously as a discipline, to hire sociologists in government and other non-academic sectors, to be informed by sociological research when crafting public policy, etc. But I don't think it makes a lot of sense to assume there should be regional variation on this within the U.S. In general, Sociology as a discipline isn't taken as seriously in the U.S. and doesn't have as much sway over public opinion, government policy, etc, compared to other social science disciplines (economics, maybe political science?). Funding and support vary from institution to institution, that institution usually being a college or university, not a city or state government.

So, yeah...places like Eugene, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Seattle, and Madison are all home to large public universities, so you're going to have jobs for sociologists there, though funding and support is going to vary between those schools (and frankly, since they're home mostly to public schools, financial support is likely to be extremely limited at some and likely most of them.)

Of course, those are all also left-leaning communities, and all but one are college towns (though of course the two are often one and the same). So...are you just asking which areas we think are friendly to left wing politics? I think it's hard for anyone to deny that Sociology, and in many ways academia, is more left leaning than the general population, but should we conflate the two?

Anyway, this is just a long winded way of saying that I don't think the question really makes a lot of sense. The U.S. in general doesn't hold the discipline in very high regard, but there are jobs for sociologists wherever there are universities or perhaps wherever there are high concentrations of policy think tanks and etc (D.C.?) You could say that any city with a large university or several universities is "friendly" to sociology, just like it would be friendly to anyone in an academic career. Within those cities, there will be some variation in how much different universities support the department, how well the departments fund faculty and students, etc. So...I think it fundamentally makes more sense to look at different schools than different regions...