Most marketable sociology subfield?

[danielcharles87]

Hello all!

 

I am currently a year out of an MA program and will be entering into a full PhD program this fall. I did my MA in the sociology of culture and the arts, primarily focusing on qualitative methods and ethnography. I was planning on continuing this but after doing some thinking and looking at the primary subfields of some departments I've been accepted to, I'm wondering this:

 

Is there a certain subfield that is most marketable when on the tenure track/professorship search? I know that some fields like criminology tend to have more jobs and I've heard that the hot spot to be is going to be medical sociology...anyone have any opinions? And how do methods play into this - is it better to be quant? Or is it better to be well-rounded and have both abilities? Obviously, subfields can be very important and varied based on the needs of a department but I'm wondering what noticeable trends might exist.

 

Thanks!

[AaronM]

http://www.asanet.org/documents/research/pdfs/2011_2012_ASA_Job_Bank_Survey_Brief.pdf

 

here's a recent report, toward the bottom they have the top 5 and bottom 5 specialties that were advertised on the job market. There are some pretty good insights here, other reports have been linked before but I'm too lazy to look it up.

[danielcharles87]

Thanks AaronM! Very helpful and definitely expected...the large disparity between the low number of culture jobs and high number of culture PhD's suggest thinking about a shift for sure!

[rising_star]

danielcharles, yes and no. Because just because a subfield hasn't been popular doesn't mean that it won't be in 4-7 years when you're on the market. For example, my subfield (not in sociology) was booming a few years ago but now is hiring about 1/2 the number of the people that were being hired in that subfield in 2009 and 2010.

[AaronM]

Good insight rising_star. It'll take most of us the better part of a decade before we hit the market, so things can change a lot by then. I was at the ASA session where they presented these findings and someone suggested that some of these trends are due to the recession. Who knows where it will be when most of us are on the market. While there are some consistent patterns between sub-disciplines, the main thing is to study something that interests you and be productive. A productive sociologist is a marketable sociologist, and thats the main thing to keep in mind.

[RefurbedScientist]

I'd like to see a time series of these data. 

 

Please pass on my request to the ASA research division.

 

Regards,

SocialGroovements

[socspice]

I'd say health and crime are both very marketable specialties. They both attract funding, which many departments are looking for. And if you look at the past few years of job ads, both of these are in high demand -- I see this increasing (esp for health/med soc), not decreasing.

[heathenist]

Brb, going to go change my lit. review of my master's paper so I can turn it into a medical sociology/criminology paper rather than a social movements paper.

[blixx008]

Have I heard wrong, or is sociology of culture on the rise (compared to where it has been in the past)? 

[Tahoma]

Have I heard wrong, or is sociology of culture on the rise (compared to where it has been in the past)? 

 

Well, judging from that report, it has nowhere to go but up.

[jacib]

Does anyone remember that post in Org Theory that basically argued that a lot of the "new" cultural sociologists were just people who would have been labeled as being in other subfields in past generations?  These things come and go.  Now, no one says the word "deviance", but when my father (also a sociologist) was in graduate school, it was among the most marketable fields.  Criminology and quantitative methods will always be marketable, especially to smaller colleges, because there isn't enough supply to meet all the demand (damn microeconomics). Whatever you end up studying, make sure you can teach "duty classes", you know, those basic introduction classes (intro, theory, quantitative methods, qualitative methods, and then some of the core "sociology of..." like urban sociology, race, inequality/strat, economics, orgs, social movements, immigration) that need to be taught no matter if anyone is excited about teaching them.  Make sure you don't just do sociology of culture (probably make sure you don't "just" do anything).  If you're interested in art worlds, probably the easiest way to bridge it with would be theory (know your Bourdieuan distinction!) and economic sociology (you know, markets, morals, and the creation of value).  It would be good to feel comfortable teaching courses in those, in addition to culture, arts, and qualitative methods.  Depending on your topic choice, you could also end up knowing either "social movements" or the orgs literature (on creativity and innovation) or even some of the urban literature .  It's all about how you frame your work.

 

Also, a post-doc we have explained it to me like this.  In the 80's, there was tons of money being thrown at education research, and then in the 90's it was all criminological, and now we're still throwing money at health/medical (Robert Wood Johnson is a big part of this, but not the only part; a lot of the money is coming NIH and NSF).  There are still plenty of other places that are relatively easy to get funded.  Sociology of religion is actually fairly well funded, because of the Templeton Foundation especially, with money flowing from Luce and some others as well.  The probably with sociology of religion is there are few jobs (except in religion departments) for people who just do sociology of religion.

Edited February 20, 2013 by jacib