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: 11:33:50 01/18/2011
Leslie Salzinger
Spring 2011
LOGICS OF SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY
SC 710
Office: McGuinn 409
Office hours: Tuesdays 2-4 or
email for 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, exploring them both through reading, analysis and
discussion of theoretical/methodological texts and through the development of individual
research proposals.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
1. Complete, close reading of assigned texts.
2. Consistent attendance and active, aware participation in class discussion.
3. Fourteen thought pieces. These should be posted on the course Blackboard site no
later than 9 pm on the Tuesday before class.
4. Weekly reading of your classmates’ postings before we meet.
5. Book analysis/review due in hard copy on April 15 at noon in McGuinn 409.
6. Research proposal due in hard copy on May 16 at noon in McGuinn 409.
Thought pieces:
Each of these postings should comprise a brief, synthetic comment or set of questions
that relates the week’s readings to each other. The point of these postings is to help you to
actively process what you’re reading and to raise issues for class discussion. These
should be posted no later than 9 pm on Tuesday, as I would like everyone to read the
postings before we meet. For the last three weeks of class, starting on April 20, you
should focus on your own project, both specifying its logic overall and relating the logic
of your study design to the readings we’ve done during the term.
Book analysis/review:
This is a 10-12 page analysis/review of either Elizabeth Bernstein’s Temporarily Yours or
Devah Pager’s Marked, discussing the book in terms of the issues raised in the course.
Research Proposal:
Please write a 10-12 page research proposal, preferably for a project you intend to carry
out. The proposal should include a viable and compelling research question, a brief
account of its empirical context and the scholarly debates to which it aims to contribute,
and an analytic and pragmatic strategy for carrying it out. You do not need to explicitly
cite the work read during the semester in this paper, but its impact should be evident.
Writing an empirical proposal requires that you begin thinking about a research project
early on, even though class itself will focus on more meta issues. All of you should plan
on meeting with me individually to discuss your research project before the end of
February, so you have time to survey relevant literature before writing the proposal.
Please don’t wait to meet with me until you have a firm idea for a project. It can take a
long time to generate a clear idea for research and I can help you at whatever stage you
find yourself.
COURSE MECHANICS
All readings are on physical and/or e-reserve at O’Neill. The first four books listed
below are on sale at the BC bookstore and on reserve at O’Neill. They are also
available, generally more cheaply, through online sources. Since you are only
required to use one of the last two books listed, they are both on reserve but I did
not order them from the bookstore. They are both easily available online, but you
should choose which to order soon so it arrives in time to write the paper.
Required:
Ethnography Unbound by Michael Burawoy et al (University of California Press, 1991)
Tales of the Field by John Van Maanen (University of Chicago Press, 1988).
Recommended (handbooks you might find useful in developing your research):
Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences: Research in an Age of Info-Glut by Kristin Luker
(Harvard University Press, 2008).
Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You’re Doing It by
Howard Becker (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
One of two required (not available at the BC Bookstore):
Marked: Race, Crime and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration by Devah
Pager (University of Chicago Press, 2007) OR
Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity and the Commerce of Sex by Elizabeth
Bernstein (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
Posting thought pieces:
The class has a website on Blackboard and all thought pieces should be posted there.
Weekly postings should be done in a timely manner, so everyone has time to read others’
contributions. After posting your contribution, please “publish” it on the site so it is
visible through your colleagues’ accounts.
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COURSE SCHEDULE
Disciplining knowledge
January 19:
Introduction
January 26: Sociology as an institution
“American Sociology Before and After WWI: The (Temporary) Settling of a Disciplinary
Field” by George Steinmetz in Craig Calhoun (Ed.) Sociology in America (University of
Chicago Press, 2007).
“The Paradox of Positivism” by Dylan Riley, Social Science History 31:1 (Spring 2007).
“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).
February 2: Making “facts”
“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).
“Objectivity Shock” and “Epistemologies of the Eye” in Objectivity by Lorraine Daston
and Peter Galison (Zone Books, 2007). Pages 11-53.
February 9: 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.
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Sociology for what?
February 16: 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.
“The Causal Devolution” in Time Matters by Andrew Abbott (University of Chicago
Press, 2001). Pages 97-125.
“The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model of Sociological
Explanation” by Philip Gorski, Sociological Methodology 34 (2004): 1-33.
“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.
The status of “data”
Feb 23: Sampling and casing
“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.
Robust claims from partial views, making sociological accounts
March 2: 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.
March 16: The project of interpretation
“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).
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March 23: 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.
“Two Cases of Ethnography: Grounded Theory and the Extended Case Method” by Iddo
Tavory and Stefan Timmermans, Ethnography 10:3 (2009): 243-263.
Relating to “the field”
March 30: 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.
“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.
“Women out of China: Traveling tales and traveling theories in postcolonial feminism”
by Aihwa Ong in Women Writing Culture by Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon eds.
(University of California Press, 1995).
The politics of narrative
April 6: The role of writing
Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography by John Van Maanen (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1988). Pages 1-12 and 45-124.
“On Ethnographic Allegory” by James Clifford in Writing Culture by James Clifford and
George Marcus eds. (University of California Press1986). Pages 98-121.
“Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell (1946). Any version.
“A Bad Writer Bites Back” by Judith Butler in The NY Times, March 20, 1999.
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Ethics
April 13: Ethics, politics and unintended consequences
“For Public Sociology: 2004 ASA Presidential Address” by Michael Burawoy, American
Sociological Review 70 (2005): 4-28.
Chapters 1-3, Action and Knowledge: Breaking the Monopology with Partipatory Action
Research by Orlando Falso-Borda and Muhammad Anisur Rahman (Apex Press, 1991).
Pages 3-34.
“The Sociologist as Partisan: Sociology and the Welfare State” by Alvin Gouldner, The
American Sociologist 3:2 (May 1968): 103-116.
“Ire in Ireland” by Nancy Scheper-Hughes in Ethnography 1:1. Pages 117-140.
April 20: Ethics through the lens of liability
Professor Sarah Babb will present on IRB issues.
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).
Research Proposals
April 27: Presentations
The Art of Writing Proposals by Adam Pzreworski and Frank Salomon (Social Science
Research Council, 1995 rev., 1998).
May 4: Presentations
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