So you missed it, all of you (except Nexusstraggler, Natasha and La Joie de la Vivre – think that’s how you spell it, man my French is rusty) missed Sociology Day. It is the only day of the year when Karl Marx comes down people’s chimneys and spreads socialist love to all. I bet you didn’t even put out cookies for him. Well I hope you all got stockings full of structural functionalism (aka ‘coal’).
So now you are destined to listen to me gloat about having taken in the day’s festivities – including the free sandwiches. Well it was a really good day. All the talks were great and interesting and, you know what? The number one reason that I attend soci day is to expand my idea of what you can actually do with sociology, which is a LOT! So then maybe there’s hope for successful careers and money-making opportunities even though we’re not management kids. It also reminds me how very relevant sociology is to things that are happening TODAY that are important and interesting and on late-breaking news (sometimes). There was a presentation about multiculturalism and social trust that applied so well to the discussions that have taken place between political leaders reviewing whether or not the ‘cultural mosaic’ of Canada is truly a good thing. There was a talk about faith-based organizations and help for the less fortunate. Programs like that are more pivotal now than ever with the booming growth of many Canadian cities. Particularly, I just heard on CBC that Vancouver has to start providing more low-cost housing or else the city will look really bad when the spotlight’s on them during the 2010 olympics. And there were many other interesting topics, including “Booberexia”, I cannot believe you all missed that!
There was a discussion of Latour and his book “Reassembling the Social”, which presents actor-network theory. Now, I haven’t read the book, nor do I have an adequately in-depth understanding of social theory to have grasped the key points just from the talk. Though, the book is now on my reading list. The jist of it that I took in, condensed for your reading pleasure, was that sociologists generally looks for certain things when they do research (i.e. surveillance, social capital, class conflict, etc) and this often turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Latour rather talks about how people should begin research by simply following actors and tracing their associations and connections that they make.
It was brought up that this sounds rather close to grounded theory and indeed it does, or at least the version of grounded theory learned in methods classes when it is not scrutinized. I was recently reminded by one of my professors that grounded theory comes with its own associations, the largest of which is that there is actually something to be found (or that emerges) in the data.
This is where my knowledge on the topic ends though, I do not yet know enough about postmodernism to know how this approach differs. However, I do want to highlight one thing that hopefully I heard right, Latour believes we should treat actors as beings that are conscious of their actions and the associations that they make. Simply, people know what they are doing! Heck, they even know what you are doing when you research them. I think this is very important because a) too many times does sociological research not give any credit to the subjects it studies, viewing them as ignorant to the social world in which they are immersed and b) we as researchers avoid admitting this. I’ve interviewed people who, halfway through the interview, start trying to figure out which connections I’m going to make about what they say and they start making meaning for themselves and I almost freaking have a heart attack. And I don’t know why. Maybe because we as researchers wouldn’t feel as special if everyone could see everything we can. However, it makes sense, I do the exact same thing anytime someone tries to study me. So, perhaps instead of making more obscure theoretical links that those being studied won’t even conclude, we should put our abstract ideas away and focus on the actual people that make up our research. Though, I’d have to read the book to see if this is what Latour concludes.
Meh, I thought it was interesting.
Here’s Latour’s homepage
(Hells yes, I actually own these and they’re on top of my desk right now)
