1

Sociological Inquiry
Sociology 30002
University of Chicago
Graduate Class: Winter 2012
John Levi Martin

Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:30 – 2:50, SS 404

Course Description

How do you make knowledge in sociology? That’s what this class is about. We are going to
look at issues of research design and process while also exploring the diversity of methods of
sociological analysis. Further, we will be doing this in a way that helps you work towards an
original research paper. But we will do so in a way that forces you to look at your question from
multiple angles.

As a result, we will be doing three sorts of things in this all-too-brief quarter. We will be reading
a bit about, and discussing, general issues of research design. We will be reading exemplary
works using different sorts of methods. We will be doing exercises related to our question,
trying out different methods and seeing what kinds of things we can learn using them. I hope
that at the conclusion you understand (1) how to choose a sociological research project that will
not be a dead end; (2) how to choose a method that will help you answer your questions and will
also be fun for you; (3) how to critically evaluate the presentation of evidence in support of
theoretical claims.

Structure

We will go through a number of different methods, namely historical, ethnography,

experimental, and interviewing, spending time that is roughly in proportion to the distribution of
use among Chicago students. But first we will start with some general aspects of method in
sociology.

Now it has become typical in these sorts of courses to assign readings about different aspects of
the research process. So Prof. X. writes an article about “sampling” and gets it published, I make
you guys read it, and so everyone but you is happy. X got a publication, and I avoided preparing
anything and teaching you. But such pieces are generally dry as toast. So instead, I will be
going through different themes in a more lecture-y way. That is, on different days I will not only
be talking about certain methodological approaches, but how this helps us think about some of
the key issues in research that cut across methods.

¡ Note ! ¡ Note ! ¡ Note ! ¡ Note ! ¡ Note ! ¡ Note ! ¡ Note !

If you need to eat, please make sure that you bring enough for everybody. All entering food will
be split 15 ways, with the exception of life-sustaining beverages or power bars for pregnant
people of any gender.
 2

Regarding every method I will have something prepared regarding 1) what is distinctive about a
certain method, its advantages and disadvantages; 2) who uses these methods and why; 3) how
the common methodological themes play out here; 4) how the works we read illustrate the
methods. Then we will discuss the works in question, paying attention to 1) do the methods
work? 2) were the methods done well? 3) do the methods match the questions? 4) do we see
advantages or disadvantages to the method come out in the examples?

I will also be returning to the key analytic issues that I think are common to sociological
research; I will be trying to make use of the strengths of different readings, so that we will be
able to think things we couldn’t have guessed at the beginning of the class. I will tend to front
load these on the “1” parts of units.

Finally, every week I will give a “tip for the week”—a little handy piece of wisdom that could
save you a few years of wasted effort.

Requirements

1) Active attendance. That means (a) coming prepared (doing “all” the reading); (b)
discussing the works and the results of the exercises.

2) Writing up weekly musings on the reading (i.e. you are to keep a journal in which you
critically analyze the methods as they whizz past). We’re talking just a two-page reaction
to the readings: you need to do one for all the classes where you see the charming “
”
icon. This means that your reaction paper is due 5:00 the day before this class, on the
major reading for this day. They can be placed in my box or electronically submitted.

3) Completion of exercises. You will have to carry out a number of projects that contribute
to the fleshing out of your question and the formation of a research proposal at the end.
You should thus be working on your final paper, in different ways, all through the class.
It may be that portions of (some of) your exercise(s) can be incorporated in your final
research proposal, although it might be that they only are food for thought. But do not
leave the entire proposal for the last week of class!

YES, there are a lot of books to read, and the price adds up too. But a small investment in terms
of the development of a methodological sense repays itself a thousand fold. As they say. The
following books are going to be at the Seminary Co-Op book store. If you can’t afford them,
you can probably squeeze by using the library and borrowing from other people, but talk to me.
Every one of these books is something any sociologist should have anyway. All the other things
will appear a bit before they are assigned on CHALK; if that doesn’t work for you let me know.
Also, the recommended readings given below are to get anyone started who wants to pursue one
method in greater detail. They are a combination of classics and personal favorites.
 3

Speaking of reading each and every one, in case I forget to say it the first day, I am aware that
some weeks the amount of assigned reading exceeds reasonable expectations even for graduate
student rite-of-passage overload. When the reading is huge and multiple, it is quite acceptable to
focus on a subset of the works, but to try to familiarize yourself with the methods and arguments
of the others. Where we read a large book, I will usually suggest parts to concentrate on, but if I
don’t, read selectively if you must, so as to focus on the methods, argument, and connection of
the two.

Required Books:
Making It Count by Stanley Lieberson $15.95
Street Corner Society by William Foote Whyte $14.95
The Fabrication of Labor, by Richard Biernacki—approx $22.00; note this is out of print
but available through the interweb as an e-book from U of C Press.
The Abolition of Feudalism by John Markoff, $29.95.
Money, Morals, and Manners by Michele Lamont $12.95
Forgive and Remember, by Charles L. Bosk $18.00

Here is the overview of the analytic plan of the class: after this I’ll go through things in more
detail with readings and dates and all that.

I. RESEARCH DESIGN I
Basic do’s and don’t and wills….I will outline the main repeating themes. The class is
not organized to follow these, but I indicate in the bigger part of the syllabus where these
themes re-appear for reconsideration.

A. Concepts
1) What are Theories? (Revisited IV1).
2) What is real, what can act? (Revisited IV1).
3) Operationalization (revisited IIIA1).
4) Relations between concepts (Revisited V2).
5) Objectivity vs. bullshit (Revisited IIB2)

B. Causality (Revisited V1).

1) Experiments
2) Causality
3) Randomization
4) Manipulation
5) Counterfactual

C. Other Regularities
1) Mechanisms (Revisited IIIA2).
2) Patterns (Revisited IIA2).
3) Subsumptions; this is a case of…? (Revisited VIA1).
4) Floors, ceilings and regressions-to-the-mean (Revisited IIIB1).
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D. Sampling (Revisited IIA1).

1) Universe / population / sample
2) Inference
3) Risk
4) Law of large numbers
5) Your theory doesn’t fit my case

E. Measurement
1) Quantities and Qualities. (Revisited IIB1).
2) What is Measurement? (Revisited VIA2).
3) What is a Variable? (Revisited VIB2).
4) Validity and reliability (Revisited VIB2).
5) Indices (Revisited VIB2).

F. Designs
1) Testing Theories and other Fast Tracks to Unemployment (Revisited VIB1.)
2) Impossible Case (Revisited VIB1.)
3) Loaded Comparison (Revisited IIIB1).
4) Grudge Match (Revisited VIB1.)
5) Synthetic Cohort and Kin (Revisited IV2).
6) Causes of Effects and Effects of….? (Revisited IIIA2),

II. WHY NOT WATCH? (Ethnography)

A. And Stay Out – Non-participant observation.
B. And Butt In – Participant Observation

III. IS IT IN THE LIBRARY? (Historical)

A. Why not see? – Systematic historical sociology
B. Why not compare? – Comparative historical

IV. IS IT IN THE BUREAU? (Demography)

V. WHY NOT MESS AROUND WITH THEM? (Experimental)

VI. WHY NOT ASK? (Interviewing)

A. Why not listen? – In-depth
B. Why not test? – Survey

VII. RESEARCH DESIGN II

Schedule of things that will happen because you make them happen….
 5

OK, now for the details, with readings and dates! And assignments! Note that a
means that
your reaction paper is due 5:00 the day before this class, on the major reading for this day. A 
means that a bigger paper is due this day or the next. Since this whole icon thing is going so
well, two more: a Ɗ
Ɗ means that this comes from the author’s dissertation project; a ₵
₵ means
 means that the dissertation never made it past the defense,
that this was done at Chicago, a

 means that the person’s career was effectively over at this point, and a  means that s/he
became the unibomber. Don’t let this happen to you! Learn the proper methods of sociological
research! It’s included free with your tuition this quarter!

I. RESEARCH DESIGN I
1) A Conversation About Theory? Can we go over what we have learned about The
Logic of Sociological Methods: Selective abstraction; Conventional ways of thinking
about sociological explanation. Variables, Cause and Effect, Deduction, Testing,
Sampling. We will talk about some of the common issues and how we will be
looping back to them over time (Wednesday, January 4).

*** NOTE NOTE NOTE ***

BEGIN Question Writing: For next time, you need to propose a sociological question that
will be your focus of investigation for this quarter. It is expected that this will be the core of a
paper that you are planning to write, though it is not unusual for the progress of this class to
lead you to fundamentally revise your question. This question should be posted on CHALK
in the blog area, which I am pretty sure I successfully created. This should be NO MORE
THAN ONE PAGE. It should have NO REFERENCES. A question is something that (1)
seems like it might have an answer; (2) but this answer is, so far, at least to you, unknown. It
is not the same thing as an interest, an illustration, or even a test.

Due Monday, January 10, by 9:00 AM! If you can, please get your questions in sooner
so we can start our discussion of them! Please read over each other’s questions, and be
ready to discuss them on Monday.
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Further recommended reading:

Regarding selective abstraction, you might want to take a good look at Max Weber’s
On the Methodology of the Social Sciences, which will give you the standard
sociological theory approach to this stuff. It also gives you a good inoculation against
the “variable” language we’ll generally be slipping into. If you need “help” with
Weber on concept formation, probably the best secondary treatment is Thomas
Burger’s Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation, though you might look to Hans
Henrik Bruun, Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber’s Methodology for
important corrections. Regarding the normal ways of talking about variables and all
that, there are a number of standard works, but all go pretty quickly into survey
analysis, statistics, or both (indeed, the more focused they are on survey analysis or
statistics, often the better the initial discussions). Classic examples are Hubert
Blalock, Social Statistics; Morris Rosenberg, The Logic of Survey Analysis, Earl
Babbie, The Language of Social Research.

2) Do you want to stick with what you have, or try for what’s behind curtain number
three? (Monday, January 9)

Required Reading: Lieberson, Making it Count. Read it all…or as much as you

can!

If possible, we’ll start discussing some questions today too!

Further recommended reading: You know, let’s hold off on the critical stuff for a
while. It’s easy to get discouraged. But I do recommend Lieberson’s later article,
“Modeling Social Processes: Some Lessons from Sports” (Sociological Forum
12[1997]:11-35. There are also some books on sociological methodology that are
collections of insight and wisdom and all that. The best I’ve read is Howard
Becker’s Tricks of the Trade, but there are too few tricks per column inch to justify
assigning it. Also, a great collection on sociological methodology—the hows, whys,
and is-it-okays, (I’m sure long out of print, otherwise I would have assigned it) is
Fist-Fights in the Kitchen edited by George H. Lewis. Regarding the issues
Lieberson raises, a recent volume: Causality in Crisis, edited by Vaugn McKim &
Stephen Turner (U of Notre Dame) might prove helpful. Certainly John Goldthorpe’s
On Sociology has a very compelling critique. For nice polemics about use and
misuse, see Joel Best’s Damned Lies and Statistics and More Damned Lies and
Statistics.

II. WHY NOT WATCH?

A. And Stay Out: The Usually Comparative Organizational Ethnography
1) In which Christopher Robin makes Some Observations about Observation, and
talks about very interesting things that you can see in the five acre wood if you
look carefully. Discussions of Ethology (Wednesday, January 11). Here we
will also revisit ID (sampling).
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Ɗ
Ɗ₵₵
,
Required Reading: Charles L. Bosk, Forgive and Remember ; Blau,
Ɗ
Ɗ
The Dynamics of Bureaucracy, 1-15, 183-206, 269-303*.

Further recommended reading:

An example of social movement comparative organizational ethnography that
takes a very different approach is Erika Summers Effler’s Laughing Saints and
Righteous Heroes. As for other types An important ethnography is Paul Willis’s
Learning to Labor; the problem is that the ethnography is mostly interviewing and
he seems to have had the theory before he began. Colin Turnbull, The Forest
People, has wonderful anecdotes of learning to overcome his own preconceptions
about the purity of other cultures. I previously used Lloyd Warner’s Yankee City
which is an interesting sort of community fieldwork, and Howard Pinderhughes’s
Race in the Hood which has some wonderful examples of interviewing technique
(see his Appendix in particular). And Peter Moskos’s Cop in the Hood is also a
nice example of an unusual type of ethnography.

Monday, January 16—I believe there is no class today?

2) Where is the close observation hiding in sociology these days? Conversation

Analysis and its near kin (Wednesday, January 18). Here we will revisit IC2.

Required Reading: McGrew, An Ethological Approach to Children’s Behavior,

selections*; John Heritage and Geoffrey Raymond, “The Terms of Agreement:
Indexing Epistemic Authority and Subordination in Assessment Sequences,”
Social Psychology Quarterly*; David Gibson. 2003. “Participation Shifts: Order
and Differentiation in Group Conversation.” Social Forces 81: 1135-81.*

Further recommended reading:

For an overview of conversation analysis, see Steven E. Clayman and Virginia T.
Gill "Conversation Analysis." In Alan Bryman and Melissa Hardy (eds.)
Handbook of Data Analysis (2004), pp. 589-606. Other work by Sacks,
Schegloff, Boden and Zimmerman, Maynard and others will appear in this place
over time….The close study of interaction in sociology largely begins with I. F.
Bales’s work; his early ideas are cool and his approach worthy of consideration.
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B. And Butt In
1) Watching, playing, asking, walking and so on (Monday, January 23). Here we
revisit IE1.

Ɗ
Ɗ₵₵

Required Reading: William. H. Whyte, Streetcorner Society , Intro, Ch 1,
Ch 5, Conclusion, Appendices A and B, Whyte, “Revisiting Street Corner
₵₵
Society”; Mitchell Duneier, Sidewalk, Intro, Appendix. (I’m going to assume
you either have this or will read it all anyway, so it’s ordered, but we’re only
going to talk about the Appendix today….)

Not required but available and I’ll briefly mention: You may look at Harriet
Whitehead, Renunciation and Reformulation, selection*--it’s one of my favorite
examples of ethnography, but it’s hard to get from this excerpt.

Further recommended reading:

Ɗ
Ɗ₵₵
Michael Burawoy; Manufacturing Consent is another good example of P-O
leading to strong theoretical claims. Come to think of it, so is his Politics of
Production. He lays out his manifesto in “The Extended Case Method,”
Sociological Theory16(1998):4-33 and in portions of Ethnography Unbound,
referred to in Week 8. There are too many great ethnographies to privilege a few
here, and also lots of anguished self-analyses of fieldworkers. Look perhaps at
Paul Rabinow’s Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco.

Another truly great work is Chicago PhD Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk, which has
a very important methodological discussion; also take a look at Sudhir Venkatesh,
ƊƊ₵₵
American Project ; his Gang Leader for a Day has an admirable discussion of
some of the ethical/methodological problems we will return to next class. A great
tradition of community studies, reaching from Lloyd Warner to Michael Bell
Ɗ
Ɗ
(Childerly ) should be looked at, but here the methods are generally less visible.
Ɗ
Ɗ
Benajmin Zablocki’s Joyful Community is an interesting twist on this take.
Another Chicago PhD, Loïc Wacquant (Body and Soul), proposes a new kind of
carnal ethnography—another recent example here is Matthew Desmond, On The
Fireline (an MA thesis that became a book). I think another of the all-time great
examples of participant observation is Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, Islands in the
Street.
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2) Ethical ethnography (Wednesday, January 25). Here we revisit IA5.

Required Reading: Kai Erikson, “A Comment on Disguised Observation in

ƊƊ
Sociology”*; Laud Humphreys, Tearoom Trade , 1-3, 16-44, 167-232 **;
Carolyn Ellis, “Emotional and Ethical Quagmires in Returning to the Field.”
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 1995, 24(1):68-98; Julia O’Connell
Davidson, “Pretty Woman, Ugly Man: Interpretavism and the Study of
Prostitution,” p. 212-215, 224-229; Charlie Kurzman, “Convincing Sociologists,”
from Ethnography Unbound, Bob Altemeyer, Enemies of Freedom, brief
selection.* (may be in lied-to packet below).

Suggested and Available Reading: PACKET ON LYING: Richard A. Leo,

“Trial and Tribulations: Courts, Ethnography, and the Need for an Evidentiary
Privilege for Academic Researchers.” American Sociologist, 1995 26(1):113-134,
Kai Erikson, “Commentary”. American Sociologist, 1995, 26(2): 4-11; Leo, “The
Ethics of Deceptive Research Roles Reconsidered: A Response to Kai Erikson.”
American Sociologist, 1996, 27(1):122-128; Erikson, “A Response to Richard
Leo.” American Sociologist, 1996, 27:129-130; “spies like us” article from
Lingua Franca; PACKET ON BEING LIED TO: Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer,
selections*, Freedman, The Hoaxing of Margaret Mead, brief selection.* Paul
Stoller and Cheryl Olkes, In Sorcery's Shadow, p. 9-11**

Further recommended reading:

For an example of ethnography without the usual form of rapport, see Colin
Turnbull, The Mountain People, introduction. For a glimpse of the other side, see
Frederik Barth’s criticism, “On Responsibility and Humanity: Calling a
Colleague to Account,” Contemporary Anthropology 15:99-102 (and Turnbull’s
non-response on the next page). Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails has a
classic instance of a serious problem in covert ethnography—the researchers
change the evolution of the group they are studying. There is a recent collection
of problems like that experienced by Ellis entitled When They Read What We
Write, edited by Caroline B. Brettell, Bergin and Garvey Publishers 1993. A
widely cited guide to organizing ethnographic data is John Lofland and Lyn H.
Lofland, Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and
Analysis (Wadsworth). And can I tell you a secret? Promise not to tell anyone?
(If you lied and said yes, you are on your way to being an ethnographer!)

NOTE THAT YOU MAY WANT TO START YOUR FIRST EXERCISE

NOW IF YOU ARE THINKING OF DOING AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ONE!
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III. IS IT IN THE LIBRARY?

A. Why not see?
1) Where does Data Come From? (Monday, January 30). Here we revisit IA3.

Required Reading: W. F. Rothenberg, From Market Places to a Market

Ɗ
Ɗ
Society , xi-4, 20-23, 28-33, 56-69, 72-111, 163-167; Carole Shammas, “The
Domestic Environment in Early Modern England and America.”*

Further recommended reading:

Carole Shammas extends the work in the wonderful The Pre-Industrial
Consumer. Jan DeVries, The Industrious Revolution puts together many of
the findings from folks like Shammas and Rothenberg into a blockbuster.
Jennifer Platt’s Articles on “Evidence and Proof in Documentary Research I
and II” (Sociological Research (1981:31-66) are well regarded and widely
cited, but you don’t need to read these “Plattitudes” until you’re a little further
along—if ever. (There’s a bit too much about antiques for scholars of your
tender years.). Her History of Sociological Research Methods in America
(Cambridge) might be interesting. On the problem of small Ns, see Charles
Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. (Selections from
this may be added to this week’s reading.) Before I used Goran Ohlin, “No
Safety in Numbers: Some Pitfalls of Historical Statistics,” in Henry
Rosovsky, ed, Industrialization in Two Systems. (NY: Wiley, 1966), p. 68-90
(it’s boring, but it shows how nit picky you have to be….) and Hyman
Mariampolski and Dana C. Hughes, “The Use of Personal Documents in
Historical Sociology” The American Sociologist 13(1978):104-113
(sometimes too obvious). On comparative methods, see the recent article by
James Mahoney, “Nominal, Ordinal, and Narrative Appraisal in Macrocausal
Analysis,” AJS 104(1999):1154-1196.

2) What Can you do with Data? (Wednesday, February 1). Here we revisit IC1
and IF6.

Required Reading: John Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism, 1-15, 20-

42, 145-153, 203-229, 337-368 (skim), 368-410, 410-426 (skim), 569-582.
Look, this is a great book, and the more you read, the better for you, but I
don’t feel quite comfortable saying that you have to read it all. Though you
should.
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Further recommended reading:

Ɗ
Ɗ
For classics, see Charles Tilly, The Vendée , and Ferdinand Braudel’s The
Mediterranean. You may compare a short piece by Markoff in the AJS in
1996 or 7. A recent fascinating work is Paul McLean, The Art of the
ƊƊ₵₵ ƊƊ
Network . We might consider using Roger Gould, Insurgent Identities .
Another interesting work might be: City of Capital by Bruce Carruthers. Most
of the non-comparative but systematic is really done by historians. Another
personal fave: Michael Katz, Michael Docet, and Mark J. Stern, The Social
Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism. With this last work, and with
social history such as Claude Fischer’s America Calling, one doesn’t use
multiple cases so much as multiple sources of data. Kai Erikson’s Wayward
Puritans is a classic of a different type of historical sociology; Carlo
Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms is another exemplar of a different
approach. I’m not sure if we could really defend them these days, but we sure
Ɗ
Ɗ
could Peter Bearman’s wonderful Relations into Rhetorics . If we had more
time, I would also use Michael Rogin, The Intellectuals and McCarthy, 1-20,
26-31, 59-103.

B. Why not compare?

1) The Logic of Comparison (Monday, February 6). Here we revisit IF3 and
IC4.

Required Reading: J.S. Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive,

Eighth Edition (Harper and Row), 278-291, 579-589, 608-613, 652-653;
William Whewell, On the Philosophy of Discovery, 262-268; Charles Ragin’s
The Comparative Method, 1-52; optional: J.S. Mill, A System of Logic,
Ratiocinative and Inductive, Eighth Edition (Harper and Row), 307-311
(response to Whewell).

Further recommended reading:

A great insider’s critique of the Millsian method comes from Goldstone,
Revolution and Rebellion. A great outsider’s is: Stanley Lieberson, “Small
Ns, big conclusions”*, What is a Case?; Bourdieu, Homo Academicus,
postscript (p. 194-225). A collected volume of essays (Skocpol, editor),
Vision and Method in Historical Sociology has some interesting contributions
in the form of critical analyses of famous guys, and especially her fighting
retreat in Theda Skocpol, “Emerging Agendas and Recurrent Strategies in
Historical Sociology.”

2) What can we get out of comparison? (Wednesday, February 8)

Ɗ
Ɗ

Required Reading: The Fabrication of Labor , by Richard Biernacki.
 12

Note: this reading is currently (and inexcusably) out of print, but if you can’t
find a used copy, UC Press has it in e-book form for free at…
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8g5008n9/

Further recommended reading:

Some of the most famous comparative-historical works are the following:
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions; Barrington Moore, Social
Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Perry Anderson, Lineages of the
Absolutist State, and Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism; Philip Gorski,
ƊƊ Ɗ
Ɗ
The Disciplinary Revolution ; Thomas Ertmann, Birth of the Leviathan .
Guy Swanson’s Religion and Regime is also a fascinating comparative study.
Mary Fulbrook, Piety and Politics is also a meso-classic. Marion Fourcade’s
book Economists and Societies shows the Berkeley angle on a different
subject.

This space intentionally left blank

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BEGIN Exercise: “Choosing a Site.” There are two variants for this—ethnographic and
historical, depending on whether your question refers to something going on now, or
something in the past. First, you need to translate your question as closely as possible to a
form that can allow for a historical or ethnographic exploration. Then conduct one of the
following exercises:

Ethnographic Variant: Choose a site and do observations. You may, if necessary, select a
site in which you are simply observing people, or one to which you have pre-existing ties, but
far, far, better will be participant-observation in a previously unfamiliar site, one chosen
because of theoretical interest. Write up the results as follows: 1) did you have a hypothesis
or hunch when you began? If so, what was it? If not, why did you pick the site (and here,
“convenience” is deadly!)? 2) What did you find that was interesting? 3) If you had a
hypothesis or question, was it addressed by what you found? If so, what is the result? 4) If
you didn’t have a hypothesis or question when you began, did you get one after the fact?
What is it? 5) Ethnographers in contrast to other sociologists are permitted to reflect upon
their research in each and every work. Tell about your personal experience as it relates to
your conclusions: did you feel phony? Did you establish rapport? Are you confident that
people were telling you the truth? Did you have main informants?

Historical Variant: Formulate a version of your question that has a (potentially or

intrinsically) historical answer, whether comparative or non-comparative. Lay out a research
design that would address the question. Explain (1) the cases to be used; (2) the data to be
analyzed; (3) the sources to be consulted; (4) how this addresses the question with which you
began. Take a look at one of the sources you list in (3) (yes, they must be real). Does it turn
out to contain what you thought it would (2)? In other words, the goal of this exercise is to see
whether primary materials that (you suspect) have information that can be used to answer
your question really do have this information.

For either of the variants, if this is the method you are planning to propose to answer your
question, how might you now revise your question? If this is not the method that you would
propose, how has it altered your understanding of the relation between questions and
answers?

This exercise is Due February 22, at 4:30 PM

IV. IS IT IN THE BUREAU?

1) The case of Durkheim, state statistics, and the founding of scientific sociology
(Monday, February 13). Here we revisit IA1-2.
 14

Required Reading: Emile Durkheim, Suicide, [41-46], 46-52, 104-122, 152-160, 171-
202 (especially), [208-216], [246-258], 259-276 (especially). Note that it is assumed
that students have read much of Suicide for their theory class. The assigned page
numbers are to brush up on the methodological aspects. Those who have not already
read Suicide should add the page numbers in brackets.

2) What can official statistics tell us? (Wednesday, February 15). Here we revisit IF5.

, ♥ Required Reading: Michael Rosenfield, Age of Independence.

Further recommended reading:
Maybe you should be independent enough to propose to your sweetheart today! That
will get you out of the homework. Anyway, Stanley Lieberson, A Matter of Taste,
uses public data on names to explore the logic of cultural change. Eric Oliver’s
dissertation includes a lovely analysis of the causes of decreased civic participation in
the suburbs. is a definitive study of the reasons for the growth in female labor force
participation, basically using economic statistics and a few reasonable assumptions
about human motivation. Dalton Conley’s Being Black, Living in the Red shows a
wonderful use of large scale statistics to paint a picture and weave in new
understandings. And a classic example of a demographic attempt to answer an
important theoretical question can be found in Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer, The
ƊƊ
Female Labor Force in the United States (Berkeley: Institute of International
Studies, 1970)—I used to assign 1-27, 52, 56-63, 141-189.

V. WHY NOT MESS AROUND WITH THEM?

1) Do you have society in a tin? The logic of experiments, true and false (Monday,
February 20). Here we revisit IB.

Required Reading: Devah Pager, Bruce Western, and Bart Bonikowski,

“Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market.” American Sociological Review
74(2009):777-799. Also review Lieberson! If you never finished it, now is a good
time….

2) Discussion of exemplary experiments (Wednesday, February 22). Here we revisit

IA4.

, Required Reading: Gerald Marwell and Ruth E. Ames, 1979, “Experiments
on the Provision of Public Goods I” American Journal of Sociology 84: 1335-1360*;
“Experiments on the Provision of Public Goods II”, AJS 85: 926-937*; Delia
Baldassarri and Guy Grossman, “Centralized Sanctioning and Legitimate Authority
Promote Cooperation in Humans,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
108(27; 2011):11023-11027.*
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Note: If a more recent piece by Baldassarri and Grossman comes out, I may
substitute this.

Further recommended reading:

Classic experiments are by Solomon Asch (see his Social Psychology for a bunch of them),
Muzafer Sherif (“The Autokinetic Effect,” a version is in his Social Interaction), and Stanley
Milgram, Obedience to Authority. Regarding a discussion of the uses and limitations of
experiments, I am fond of “Can You Really Study an Army in the Laboratory?” by Morris
Zelditch, Jr., in Amitai Etzioni and Edward Lehman, eds., A Sociological Reader on
Complex Organizations. One of my favorite experimental studies is the incredibly bold
sociology of knowledge by Breer and Locke, Task Experience as a Source of Attitudes. And
the wonderful “A Preliminary Laboratory Study of the Acting Crowd” by Guy Swanson,
which has to be read to be believed. Those were the glory days of the ASR! The precursor to
ƊƊ
the Pager et al. piece was Devah Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” American
Journal of Sociology 108: 900 or so, plus her book… If you’re seriously interested in
pursuing experiments, I’d strongly recommend Artifact in Behavioral Research edited by
Rosenthal and Roskow. I previously used Michael Lovaglia, Jeffrey W. Lucas, Jeffrey A.
Houser, Shane Thye, and Barry Markovsky. “Status Processes and Mental Ability Test
Scores.” American Journal of Sociology 104 (1998):195-228 which is another example of a
generative experiment that suggests multiple interpretations.

VI. WHY NOT ASK?

A. Why not listen?
1) How does one talk anyway? (Monday, February 27). Here we revisit IC3.

Required Reading: Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, Becoming an Ex, 1-3, 25-40,
62-65, 87-89, 97-103, 124-129, 139-143 and Appendix B (213-224) **,

Further recommended reading:

James Spradley’s The Ethnographic Interview is an interesting manual for
question-asking, but the technique advocated really is focused around
interviewing informants when one doesn’t know much, as opposed to the
more focused interview style. Robert S. Weiss, Learning from Strangers might
be a better one for most purposes.

2) To whom does one talk? (Wednesday, February 29). Here we revisit IE2.

Required Reading: Michele Lamont, Money Morals Manners: This is an

extremely pleasant book to read, but make sure to concentrate on the note to
the reader, prologue, chapters 1 through 4, and the Appendixes.
 16

Further recommended reading:

Ann Swidler’s Talk of Love shows another way of using interview data to
learn things that you might not be able to understand in other ways. Lone
Pursuit: Distrust and Defensive Individualism Among the Black Poor by
Sandra Susan Smith also couples in-depth interviewing with an intriguing
research design. The Stars Are Not Enough: Scientists--Their Passions and
Professions by Joseph C. Hermanowicz may be another cool exemplar.

BEGIN Exercise: Making Data. There are again two variants of this exercise.

In-Depth Interviewing Version: Think of a question that you might be able to answer by
asking people. And not a whole bunch of people, just some. Who would you interview?
How would you get this information? Do two in-depth interviews. The first should be with
someone who is not a sociologist. I understand you’ll probably have to hit on someone you
know pretty well, but the more distant the better. For the second, interview someone in the
class (I will assign your interviewee from among the other students choosing the interview
variant). For both, try to get the information you want to answer your question. (I suggest
you tape record the interview, unless you are an expert note-taker. Give yourself an hour or
so for each interview.) When you’re done, write up your report as follows: 1) the question or
hunch; 2) whom you would interview if this was a real project; 3) whom you actually chose
to interview; 4) how you think the interview went; 5) what you learned. Do you think you
could answer your question with more of these interviews? Give snippets. NOW ATTACH
A SECOND PART—tell me about the interview in which you were the subject. Did you
think it went well? Did the questions make sense? Did the interviewer establish rapport?
Did they get information that was misleading? Did you ever withhold information or lie?
Did some questions ask too much from you in cognitive terms?

Experimental Version: Take your question and consider some aspects that might seem most
difficult to answer using the method(s) previously tried. Write a proposal that would suggest
how an experimental approach could be used to answer these questions. Describe it in
detail—say who are the subjects, what are the procedures, how are the data collected, how are
they analyzed, and defend your claim that what is measured in the experiment is the same as
whatever you were talking about in your theoretical question.

This exercise is due Tuesday, March 8, at 4:30 PM!

B. Why not test?
1) How do you analyze surveys? What can they tell you as opposed to not tell you?
(Monday, March 5). Here we revisit IF1,2,4.
 17

Required Reading: Stephen Vaisey, “Motivation and Justification: A

Dual‐Process Model of Culture in Action” American Journal of Sociology
114(2009):1675-1715; Erik Olin Wright, Classes, 6-18, 137-156, 163-173—
maybe another page I need to add; Kim A. Weeden and David B. Grusky, “The
Case for a New Class Map,” American Journal of Sociology 111 (2005): 141-212;
D. Paul Sullins, “Catholic/Protestant Trends on Abortion, Convergences and
Polarity” (JSSR 38, no .3, 1999). Note: There is somewhere I think a more
accessible treatment of the Weeden and Grusky argument that has a very intuitive
3-D map of occupational inheritance, and if I can find it, I’ll substitute it for this
more technical argument….

2) How do you make surveys? (Wednesday, March 7). Here we revisit IE3-5.
 Required Reading: Edward O. Laumann et al, The Social Organization of
Sexuality, 35-71, 96-118, 124-133, 606-608, 622-649, 670-677*, Paul M.
Sniderman and Edward G. Carmines, Reaching Beyond Race, 11-14, 37-53*,

Further recommended reading:

A note on question writing. The course will focus on those methods that graduate students are
likely to use. It is not likely that many students will write closed-choice questionnaires (standard
surveys), and hence I haven’t focussed on writing them. If you ever go on to do that, you will
have to learn this—it’s not easy. The best book on this is still Payne’s The Art of Asking
Questions. One of my favorite works of survey research is Sal Oropesa, “Consumer Possession,
Consumer Passions, and Subjective Well Being.” 1995 Sociological Forum.

VII. RESEARCH DESIGN II

Now that I know that, what do I do? Note: Usually there is a last class where we
pull things together; because of scheduling we’re missing that. We can decide if we
want to try to squeeze something in. If so, we will return to some of the main themes
and see to what extent we have a coherent view.

BEGIN Final exercise. Write a research proposal for your question. It should be as clear as
possible regarding: (1) what your question is; (2) why it is reasonably important; (3) how you
plan to study it (what general methodological approach); (4) your choice of site or data
source; (5) your choice of methods and proposed line of investigation; (6) possible problems
that you are likely to run into.

Remember:
1. Clarity and specificity above all else. You have a good proposal when you can die
right now, and your executors can still write this one up.

2. Even if you’ve already begun your project, take this seriously—re-think what your
question is. What would be the best way to answer it? Don’t try to sell what you have
in your hand if you realize there could be something better.

3. Feel free to use portions of your earlier exercises, word for word if appropriate.
That’s what they were all about.

Due Monday March 14!

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ADDENDUM:
What else do you need to write a great sociological paper or book besides all the work? Maybe a
bit on how to phrase your argument. This brings us to the art of rhetoric, for which I do not have
time in this quarter. There are conventions of presentation and argumentation which are
necessary (though not sufficient) for scholarly communication in sociology. I suggest that you
take a look at the followings: Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life; Latour,
Science in Action, Charles Kurzman, "The Rhetoric of Science: Strategies for Logical Leaping,"
Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 33, 1988, pp. 131-158; Donald McCloskey, The Rhetoric of
Economics, Michael Lynch, “Pictures of Nothing? Visual Constructs in Social Theory”
Sociological Theory 9 (1991):1-21 has a nice analysis of the rhetoric of visual presentation.
Bruno Latour, in “Visualization and Cognition” (Knowledge and Society 6:1-40) stresses the
importance of distilling complexity into visual form so as to triumph in agonistic encounters with
competing would-be truth-tellers. And in fact, in his Pasteurization of France, he has some great
examples of this, but not for sociology. You also might want to look at Alvin Gouldner’s
explanation for Talcott Parsons’s rhetorical style in The Coming Crisis in Western Sociology.
There is a growing body of explicit work on rhetoric and/in sociology. In the Hunter edited
volume, The Rhetoric of Social Research, you might want to look at James Bennett’s analysis of
the rhetoric of Merton’s paper on anomie; in the same volume Kai Erikson has a nice and
reasonable discussion of the pros and cons of scientific-y voice. (Which reminds me of Ira
Cohen’s analysis of “Voice as Method,” comparing the rhetorical strategies of Goffman and
Garfinkle.) Other things I haven’t read: Richard H. Brown, A Poetic for Sociology, Ricca
Edmondson, Rhetoric in Sociology, and Andrew Weigert, “The Immoral Rhetoric of Scientific
Sociology”, American Sociologist 5(1970):111-116.

Have a nice life ☺!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This course is based on a methods course I previously taught at

Rutgers University which was based on one that I took with Claude Fischer. I thank Daniel
Menchik for recent suggestions.