Please note that this syllabus should be regarded as only a general guide to the course. The instructor may have changed
specific course content and requirements subsequent to posting this syllabus. Last Modified: 01:49:17 01/22/2010
Leslie Salzinger
Spring 2010
LOGICS OF SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY
SC 710
Office: McGuinn 409
Office hours: Thursdays 2-4 or
by appointment
Office phone: 552-4134
Email: salzinge@bc.edu
Sociology is famously obsessed with “methods”: exactly what is the correct way to
conduct an interview, write a questionnaire, select a random sample? Yet there is a prior
set of epistemological and conceptual issues these questions leave untouched. What is the
aim of sociology? Are we trying to describe, to explain? What does it mean to “explain”
something anyway? How are we to understand our relationship to the world we study?
Do we strive to understand society from “the outside” or grasp it through clarifying our
own location within it? How can one make claims about “society” from necessarily
partial information? What is the logic through which we make sociological claims? What
are the ethical and political problems and possibilities inherent in research? It is to these
questions that we turn this term.
We will explore these most fundamental research issues through two parallel processes:
theoretical reading and discussion and ongoing exploration in writing of the implications
of these ideas for your individual empirical projects. This requires that you have
individual empirical projects… At this stage, I suspect some of you already have a
specific research idea, while others have more generally formulated interests. For the
purposes of the class, you’ll need, at a minimum, to choose a set of questions you are
interested in engaging with throughout the term and writing a research proposal about at
term’s end. You do not have to actually do this project! However you do need to be
interested enough in the question to carry its exploration through the term.
Course requirements:
1. Complete, close reading of assigned texts.
2. Consistent attendance and active, aware participation in class discussion. 20% grade.
3. Fourteen, 400-600 word thought pieces in response to weekly prompts. These should
be posted on the course Blackboard site no later than 9 pm on the Tuesday before
class. 40% grade.
4. Completion of a formal research proposal. Specifics TBA. 40% grade.
All readings are on physical and/or e-reserve at O’Neill. The books below are on
sale at the BC bookstore and on reserve at O’Neill. They are also available,
generally more cheaply, through online sources. You could manage without buying
all of them, as whenever possible I’ve put separate chapters on e-reserve (see
syllabus for how much is required). Nonetheless, these are all books I think you’d
find well-worth owning, in which case you might as well get them now.
Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison (Zone Books, 2007).
Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences by Kristin Luker (Harvard University Press,
2008).
Tricks of the Trade by Howard Becker (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Ethnography Unbound by Michael Burawoy et al (University of California Press, 1991)
Death without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes (University of California Press, 1993)
Tales of the Field by John Van Maanen (University of Chicago Press, 1988).
January 20- January 27: Disciplining knowledge
January 20:
Introduction
January 27: Sociology as an institution
“The Genealogy of a Positivist Haunting: Comparing Prewar and Postwar U.S.
Sociology” by George Steinmetz, boundary 2 32:2 (2005): 109-135.
“Why is Classical Theory Classical?” by R.W. Connell, American Journal of Sociology
102:6 (May 1997): 1511-1557.
“The Context of Disciplines” in The Chaos of Disciplines by Andrew Abbott (University
of Chicago Press, 2001).
“What’s It All About?” in Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences by Kristin Luker
(Harvard University Press, 2008).
Weekly writing:
Find and read an article in the Annual Review of Sociology in the general area of your
research interest. Write a brief discussion of the implications of this week’s readings for
how one might think about this area.
January 3: “References”
“Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Forest” in Pandora’s Hope by
Bruno Latour (Harvard University Press, 1999).
“Literature” in Science in Action by Bruno Latour (Harvard University Press, 1987).
“Reviewing the Literature” in Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences by Kristin Luker
(Harvard University Press, 2008).
“Concepts” in Tricks of the Trade by Howard Becker (University of Chicago Press,
1998).
Weekly writing:
Complete the “daisy” described by Luker in the end of Chapter 5. Write a brief
discussion of how one might think about this exercise in light of the week’s readings.
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February 10- February 17: Epistemology
February 10: A history of “objectivity”
Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison (Zone Books, 2007). Pages 9-251 and
309-382.
Weekly writing:
Write a brief discussion of the implications of Daston and Galison for how you might
visualize (or otherwise describe) your object of study.
February 17: Situating the researching self
“Introduction: Standpoint Theory as a Site of Political, Philosophic, and Scientific
Debate” by Sandra Harding in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader by Sandra
Harding (ed.). Pages 1-15.
“A Sociology for Women” in The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist
Sociology by Dorothy Smith (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987).
Pages 49-104.
“Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black
Feminist Thought” by Patricia Hill Collins, Social Problems 33:6 (1986).
“Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial
Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14:3 (Fall 1988): 575-599.
“Why Standpoint Matters” by Alison Wylie in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader
by Sandra Harding (ed.). Pages 339-351.
Weekly writing:
Write a brief discussion of the implications of this set of readings for how you might
approach your project.
February 24: Sociology for what?
February 24: Explanation, interpretation, description
“Introduction” in Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern
Metropolis, Michael Burawoy et al (eds.) (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991). Pages 1-7.
Chapter 1, Part I, “Explanation” in Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social
Sciences by Andrew Abbott (University of Chicago Press, 2004). Pages 8-13.
“The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model of Sociological
Explanation” by Philip Gorski, Sociological Methodology 34 (2004): 1-33.
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“Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” in Language, Counter-Memory and Practice: Selected
Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault edited by Donald Bouchard. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1977.
Weekly writing:
How do you envision your overall project? What sort of “account” might you be
interested in creating? Write a brief discussion of how you are thinking of the goals of
your project using some of the frameworks provided in this week’s readings.
March 10-March 17: The status of “data”
March 10: Casing
“Introduction: Cases of What is a Case?” and “‘Casing’ and the Process of Social
Inquiry” by Charles Ragin in What is a Case?: Exploring the Foundations of Social
Inquiry edited by Charles Ragin and Howard Becker (Cambridge University Press,
1992). Pages 1-17 and 217-226.
“Two Cases of Ethnography: Grounded Theory and the Extended Case Method” by Iddo
Tavory and Stefan Timmermans, Ethnography 10:3 (2009): 243-263.
“Revealing the Unmarked: Finding Masculinity in a Global Factory” by Leslie Salzinger,
Ethnography 5:1 (2004): 5-28.
Weekly writing:
How might you study your project as a “case”? If you already have a case, what is your
case a case of? Write a brief discussion of this process with reference to the week’s
readings.
March 17: Sampling
“The Study Design” and Appendix A in The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual
Practices in the United States by Edward Laumann et al (University of Chicago Press,
1994). Pages 35-71 and 549-570.
“The Sex Survey” in Sex in America: A Definitive Survey by Robert Michael et al (Little
Brown and Company 1994). Pages 15-41.
“Invisible Inequality” in Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western
(Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). Pages 85-107.
“Theoretical Sampling” in The Discovery of Grounded Theory by Barney Glaser and
Anslem Strauss (Aldine 1967). Pages 45-77.
“Sampling” in “On Sampling, Operationalization, and Generalization” in Salsa Dancing
into the Social Sciences by Kristin Luker (Harvard University Press, 2008). Pages 100113.
Weekly writing:
What might you “sample” in order to investigate the issues that concern you? Concretely,
how might you go about doing this sampling? Write a brief discussion with reference to
the week’s readings.
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March 24-April 7: Robust claims from partial views, making sociological accounts
March 24: Empirical and theoretical “generalization”
Prologue and Epilogue in The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the
United States by Edward Laumann et al (University of Chicago Press, 1994). Page xxviixxxii and 541-548.
“Sex in America,” “How Many Sex Partners Do We Have?” and “Sex and Society” in
Sex in America: A Definitive Survey by Robert Michael et al (Little Brown and Company
1994). Pages 1-14, 88-110 and 230-246.
“Work and Self” and “Mistakes at Work” in On Work, Race and the Sociological
Imagination by Everett Hughes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Pages 5766 and 79-88.
Weekly writing:
How might you “generalize” from the data you plan to collect for your project? That is,
how might you conceive of your data as theoretically typical or empirically representative
of something beyond itself? Discuss these issues with reference to the week’s readings.
March 31: The project of interpretation
“Operationalization” in “On Sampling, Operationalization, and Generalization” in Salsa
Dancing into the Social Sciences by Kristin Luker (Harvard University Press, 2008).
Pages 113-124.
Luker Chapter 6 on operationalization
“Sex, Lies, and Social Science and An Exchange” in It Ain’t Necessarily So by Richard
Lewontin (Granta 2000). Pages 237-280.
“Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight” and “Thick Description: Toward an
Interpretive Theory of Culture” in The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz
(New York: Basic Books, 1973).
Weekly writing:
How might you interpret the data you plan to collect for your project? Could you read it
as a microcosm of the social world around it? Discuss these issues with reference to the
week’s readings.
April 7: Theoretical and empirical extensions
“The Extended Case Method” in Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the
Modern Metropolis, Michael Burawoy et al (eds.) (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1991). Pages 271-287.
“The Extended Case Method” by Michael Burawoy in Sociological Theory 16:1 (March
1998): 4-33.
“A Maid by Any Other Name: The Transformation of ‘Dirty Work’ by Central American
Immigrants” by Leslie Salzinger in Ethnography Unbound, Michael Burawoy et al, eds.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). Pages 139-160.
“(M)Other Love: Culture, Scarcity, and Maternal Thinking” and “Our Lady of Sorrows”
in Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil by Nancy ScheperHughes (University of California Press, 1992). Pages 340-433.
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Weekly writing:
How might you extrapolate – either theoretically, empirically or both – from your data?
Discuss this with reference to the week’s readings.
April 14-April 28: Relating to “the field”
April 14: The researching self – contaminant or instrument?
“The Participant Observer as Human Being: Observations on the Personal Aspects of
Fieldwork” by Herbert Gans in Qualitative Research, Volume II, edited by Alan Bryman
and Robert Burgess (Sage 1999). Pages 39-54.
“Walking the Talk? What Employers Say Versus What They Do” by Devah Pager and
Lincoln Quillian, American Sociological Review 70 (2005): 355-380.
“Ways of Seeing” in Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico’s Global
Factories by Leslie Salzinger (University of California Press, 2003). Pages 1-8.
“Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities” in Studies in Ethnomethodology
by Harold Garfinkel (Polity Press, 1967). Pages 35-75.
“‘Doin’ the Hustle’: Constructing the Ethnographer in the American Ghetto” by Sudhir
Venkatesh, Ethnography 3:1 (2002): 91-111.
Weekly writing:
How do you see yourself as a researcher in this project, as problematic contaminant,
useful measurement instrument, or both? Discuss these issues with reference to the
week’s readings.
April 21: Ethics through the lens of “liability” (NO CLASS – PRIVATE
MEETINGS APRIL 15)
The Belmont Report, The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of
Biomedical and Behavioral Research, US Department for Health, Education and Welfare.
1979 (http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/belmont.html).
Research on Human Subjects: Academic Freedom and the Institutional Review Board,
American Association of University Professors. 2006
(http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/comm/rep/A/humansubs.htm).
“Don’t Talk to the Humans: The Crackdown on Social Science Research” by Christopher
Shea, Lingua Franca 10:6 (September 2000).
Weekly writing:
Complete a version of the BC IRB’s human subject protocol for your research project.
Do not submit this to the IRB. Post it on the class Blackboard site as usual.
April 28: Ethics, politics and unintended consequences
“For Public Sociology: 2004 ASA Presidential Address” by Michael Burawoy, American
Sociological Review 70 (2005): 4-28.
“I Wish This Were a Poem of Practices of Participatory Research” by Budd Hall in The
Handbook of Action Research, edited by Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury (Sage, 2001).
Pages 171-178.
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“The Sociologist as Partisan: Sociology and the Welfare State” by Alvin Gouldner, The
American Sociologist 3:2 (May 1968): 103-116.
“The Uncontrollable Afterlives of Ethnography” by George Steinmetz, Ethnography 5:3
(2004): 251-288).
Weekly writing:
Does your project have ethical and/or political goals beyond the production of
knowledge? If so, how would you characterize them? If not, what are the problems with
thinking of sociology in these terms? Discuss these issues with reference to the week’s
readings.
May 5: The politics of narrative
May 5: Writing
“Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell (1946). Any version.
Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography by John Van Maanen (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1988). Pages 1-12 and 45-124.
Weekly writing:
Work on your proposal! Depending on how you write, post either your introduction or
outline on Blackboard.
Formal research proposals due, in hard copy, on Monday May 17 by noon
in McGuinn 409.
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