Research Catalog

Title

Our studies, ourselves : sociologists' lives and work / edited by Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz.

Publication

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Glassner, Barry.
• Hertz, Rosanna.

Description

x, 278 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"What motivates a lifelong scholarly pursuit, and how do one's studies inform life outside the academy? Sociologists, who live in families but also study families, who go to work but also study work, who participate in communities but also try to understand communities, have an especially intimate relation to their research. Growing up poor, struggling as a woman in a male-dominated profession, participating in protests against the Vietnam War: facts of life influence research agendas, individual understandings of the world, and ultimately the shape of the discipline as a whole. Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz asked twenty-two of America's most prominent sociologists to reflect upon how their personal lives influenced their research and, vice versa, how their research has influenced their lives. In this volume, the authors reveal with candor and discernment how world events, political commitments, and unanticipated constraints influenced the course of their careers. They disclose how race, class, and gender proved to be pivotal elements in the course of their individual lives, and in how they carry out their research. Faced with academic institutions that did not hire or promote persons of their gender, race, sexual orientation, or physical disability, they invented new routes to success within their fields. Faced with disappointments in political organizations to which they were devoted, they found ways to integrate their disillusionment into their research agendas. While some of the contributors radically changed their political commitments, and others saw more stability, none stood still. An intimate look at biography and craft, these snapshots provide a fascinating glimpse of the sociological life for colleagues, other academics, and aspiring young sociologists. The collection demonstrates how inequalities and injustices can be made into motors for scholarly research, which in turn have the power to change individual life courses and entire societies." -- Publisher.

Subject

• Sociology > Research > North America > Case studies
• Sociologists > North America
• Sociology > Philosophy
• 71.04 teaching, profession and organization of sociology
• Sociologists
• Sociology > Philosophy
• Sociology > Research
• Soziologie
• Forschung
• Sociologen
• Onderzoek
• Levensloop
• North America
• USA

Genre/Form

• Case studies
• Case studies.
• Études de cas.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

Studying the enemy / Kathleen M. Blee -- Reflections on the intersection of research and politics in academia / Hector L. Delgado -- Working out class while studying elites / Susan A. Ostrander -- World events and career experiences : a personal perspective / Mark S. Mizruchi -- Searching for action research and teaching / William H. Friedland -- From Vietnam till today / Howard Schuman -- Making problems : reflections on experience and research / John Walton -- My years in antipoverty research and policy / Herbert J. Gans -- Unscripted : continuity and change in the gendered life course / Phyllis Moen -- Confessions of an accidental sociologist / Arlene Skolnick -- Writing as a democrat and a feminist / Jane Mansbridge -- Decoding dichotomies and pushing the boundaries : a lifetime of research on women in the professions / Cynthia Fuchs Epstein -- Resisting institutional capture as a research practice / Dorothy E. Smith -- The ins and outs of othering / Barrie Thorne -- Musician, sociologist, and hearing person : a crisis of identities / Robert R. Alford -- Social-class tensions and value conflicts in the disability world / Gary L. Albrecht -- In defense of foxes / Christopher Winship -- Feminist fieldworker : research, teaching, and memoir / Sherryl Kleinman -- Feminism in the field / Jody Miller -- Professional rebellions and personal researches, or how I became bored with myself / Joshua Gamson -- The body of knowledge / Shulamit Reinharz -- My life in social movements : from 1960s activist to lesbian den mother / Verta Taylor.

ISBN

• 0195146611
• 9780195146615

LCCN

2002151655

OCLC

• ocm50866886
• 50866886
• SCSB-8800244

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library