John W Mohr
My primary interest is in the empirical study of meaning systems. My work seeks to bring together the theoretical concerns of post-structuralist semiotic theory with network based mathematical approaches to the analysis of relational systems. In particular I have been interested in the use of dual mode styles of formal analysis (such as lattice analysis and correspondence analysis) to link systems of discourse to systems of practice. More recently (with Harrison White) I have sought to theorize this formulation more generally, applying it to a variety of different types of articulation structures (lower/higher levels of social organization, structure/agency, culture/practice). Elsewhere, I have tried to model various types of duality systems (culture/practice, theory/method, truth/power, niche/form, etc. — see papers).
My original training was as an organizational sociologist. My dissertation had to do with the rise of bureaucratic forms of rationalization in the social welfare sector in New York City between 1880 and 1920. My focus was on the effects of cultural meaning systems, and especially moral constructs about worthiness and unworthiness, on the ways in which the old institutional system gave way to something that was distinctly modernist in its orientations.
I also have studied the New Deal era, again with a perspective that seeks to understand how social constructions of need are dually constitutive with the rise and fall of organizational forms.
My primary interest throughout has been developing an adequate theory of institutions which I understand to be a fundamentally interpretative problem. But, for me, interpretation is also subject to scientific pursuit and my research has always sought to identify ways in which formal analysis can be usefully linked to the interpretative analysis of institutional forms.
About a decade ago, inspired by time spent working as a university administrator, much of my work shifted over to the study of the university as an organizational system. I have analyzed the formal organization of diversity discourse at the University of California. And, with funding from the "Institute for Women's Leadership" (IWL) at Rutgers University, I have been working with Joe Castro, Sarah Fenstermaker, and Debra Guckenheimer to better understand how faculty come to be involved (or not) with various types of activism, job based interventions, participation in formal channels of change and contestation over positions of authority and control.
I also participated as a research team member at the NSF Sponsored Center for Nanotechnology and Society at UCSB. Working with Barbara Harthorn I edited a volume of papers entitled, "The Social Life of Nanotechnology." (published by Routledge).
More recently I have been collaborating with Computer Scientists to apply various types of text mining tools to analyze texts (including a project that focuses on state based rhetoric as utilized in U.S. National Security Strategy documents (see "Graphing the Grammar of Motives", below).
Currently I am co-PI on an NSF IGERT Graduate Training Grant on Network Science and Big Data.
Address: Dept of Sociology,
UC, Santa Barbara
My original training was as an organizational sociologist. My dissertation had to do with the rise of bureaucratic forms of rationalization in the social welfare sector in New York City between 1880 and 1920. My focus was on the effects of cultural meaning systems, and especially moral constructs about worthiness and unworthiness, on the ways in which the old institutional system gave way to something that was distinctly modernist in its orientations.
I also have studied the New Deal era, again with a perspective that seeks to understand how social constructions of need are dually constitutive with the rise and fall of organizational forms.
My primary interest throughout has been developing an adequate theory of institutions which I understand to be a fundamentally interpretative problem. But, for me, interpretation is also subject to scientific pursuit and my research has always sought to identify ways in which formal analysis can be usefully linked to the interpretative analysis of institutional forms.
About a decade ago, inspired by time spent working as a university administrator, much of my work shifted over to the study of the university as an organizational system. I have analyzed the formal organization of diversity discourse at the University of California. And, with funding from the "Institute for Women's Leadership" (IWL) at Rutgers University, I have been working with Joe Castro, Sarah Fenstermaker, and Debra Guckenheimer to better understand how faculty come to be involved (or not) with various types of activism, job based interventions, participation in formal channels of change and contestation over positions of authority and control.
I also participated as a research team member at the NSF Sponsored Center for Nanotechnology and Society at UCSB. Working with Barbara Harthorn I edited a volume of papers entitled, "The Social Life of Nanotechnology." (published by Routledge).
More recently I have been collaborating with Computer Scientists to apply various types of text mining tools to analyze texts (including a project that focuses on state based rhetoric as utilized in U.S. National Security Strategy documents (see "Graphing the Grammar of Motives", below).
Currently I am co-PI on an NSF IGERT Graduate Training Grant on Network Science and Big Data.
Address: Dept of Sociology,
UC, Santa Barbara
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Papers by John W Mohr
2015), I suggested things are looking pretty
good for sociological theory, an optimism
grounded in my appreciation of emergent
sociological sub-fields where interesting
theoretical work is being paired with
innovative new measurement regimes to
create different kinds of sociological insights. I
pointed to the field of computational sociology
(or Big Data social science) as an example. In
this second part, I offer a few reasons why I
think this area of research will continue to
need more and better theory in the years
ahead. I highlight three causes, what I call: (1)
the paradigm effect, (2) the data effect, and (3)
the culture effect.
scholars who work on matters of culture with the writings of a group of scholars who had prepared papers for a special symposium on scientific measurement held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) back in 1956. We focus on three issues—the recurring need to reinvent measurement (as illustrated by the career of the psychologist S.S. Stevens), the linkage between
qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis (as articulated in the writings of the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld), and the assertion (by philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Peter Caws) that theorizing necessarily precedes measuring. We review a number of important advances in the way that measurement is theorized and implemented in the sociology of culture and we also point to a number of enduring dilemmas and conundrums that continue to occupy researchers in the field today.
2015), I suggested things are looking pretty
good for sociological theory, an optimism
grounded in my appreciation of emergent
sociological sub-fields where interesting
theoretical work is being paired with
innovative new measurement regimes to
create different kinds of sociological insights. I
pointed to the field of computational sociology
(or Big Data social science) as an example. In
this second part, I offer a few reasons why I
think this area of research will continue to
need more and better theory in the years
ahead. I highlight three causes, what I call: (1)
the paradigm effect, (2) the data effect, and (3)
the culture effect.
scholars who work on matters of culture with the writings of a group of scholars who had prepared papers for a special symposium on scientific measurement held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) back in 1956. We focus on three issues—the recurring need to reinvent measurement (as illustrated by the career of the psychologist S.S. Stevens), the linkage between
qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis (as articulated in the writings of the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld), and the assertion (by philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Peter Caws) that theorizing necessarily precedes measuring. We review a number of important advances in the way that measurement is theorized and implemented in the sociology of culture and we also point to a number of enduring dilemmas and conundrums that continue to occupy researchers in the field today.