Monday, January 03, 2005
Informal Training in Sociology
We are interested in identifying the aspects of informal professionalization that help people successfully launch their careers as sociologists. What are some aspects of informal professionalization that people do not talk about formally but that are important to know for one’s career?
Although sociologists are adept at analyzing a whole range of institutions, we have very little dialogue about our own discipline’s informal professional norms. We have published a paper that articulates some of these norms, which we published in The American Sociologist (Fall 2003). We also wrote a piece in Footnotes (Dec 2004) addressing similar issues in graduate training. We know that we have not necessarily gotten things right and we are interested in starting to have more dialogue among sociologists of all stripes on this topic. We have started this web log to coincide with the Footnotes piece, which may have alerted you to this site. We hope to solicit more dialogue about informal professionalization in sociology and we welcome any responses that you have to exploring this subject further.
Although sociologists are adept at analyzing a whole range of institutions, we have very little dialogue about our own discipline’s informal professional norms. We have published a paper that articulates some of these norms, which we published in The American Sociologist (Fall 2003). We also wrote a piece in Footnotes (Dec 2004) addressing similar issues in graduate training. We know that we have not necessarily gotten things right and we are interested in starting to have more dialogue among sociologists of all stripes on this topic. We have started this web log to coincide with the Footnotes piece, which may have alerted you to this site. We hope to solicit more dialogue about informal professionalization in sociology and we welcome any responses that you have to exploring this subject further.
