Tagged: epistemology

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture

Silence Does Not Equal Siding with the Oppressor: Why I Decided Not to Attend the March

Aside from disliking huge crowds, there are many reasons why I decided not to attend the Women’s March this upcoming Saturday (January 21st, 2017). This inauguration is scary and telling of times to come. It has been a while since I have been this scared, especially after moving to a red state. Up until now, I have been steadfast in my sociological training. Many professors tell budding sociologists they need to be (p)olitical as opposed to (P)olitical because objectivity is...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work / Teaching & Learning Guide

Are We All Expert Impostors?

In a previous post (which can be found here), I mentioned the ‘impostor phenomenon’ and how I and many people I know who work in academia have experienced it in some form or another during their career. The ‘imposter syndrome’ (identified by Clance & Imes, 1978, pp. 1-2), the feeling that leads the self-declared impostors to believe that they are not intelligent and that anyone who thinks otherwise has simply been fooled, is usually accompanied by a fear that one...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work / Teaching & Learning Guide

Learning to Fail or Failing to Learn    

Nobody really talks about how or why his or her research failed, or what you are supposed to do when you can see that the fieldwork you are in the middle of might be doomed. Those who decide to leave their research uncompleted rarely write up their experiences, and so the lessons that can be learnt about what not to do during your research, and how to avoid a similar outcome, are forever lost in the private notebooks of the...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Don't Quote Me On This!

  I am not going to cite, quote or reference anyone in this post, and I wonder if that will change the opinion of those who read it. Does citing someone else make what I write more valid, more accurate or more valuable? Citation and referencing are an important part of academic writing; it is a painstaking, laborious and often frustrating process that is, unfortunately, unavoidable. Of course, I understand why it is necessary. When communicating ideas or concepts it is...

Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Going Out of My Mind in Jandiayacu

    So often we talk about being rational, making decisions based on established facts and existing knowledge, as if it is, and should be, the aim of all people at all times. Ways of being or knowing that sit outside of accepted knowledge can open a person up to being dismissed, discredited or ridiculed, particularly in the academic world. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a somewhat methodical and ‘rational’ person (most of the time). I love...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion

wikipedia and the gender neutral voice

I recently came across a tool that has been around for a couple of years. GenderAnalyzer claims that it can determine the gender of the author of any text that you point it to. It learns to do this by looking at thousands of blogs and the corresponding gender of the author. Give it a try: genderanalyzer.com As of today, it looks like it has a 63% success rate; not impressive but better than chance. Leaving aside how serious we...

Political & Economic Sociology / Science & Technology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

britannica is putting customers to work

by nathan jurgenson The very idea of Wikipedia -the open-source encyclopedia that anyone with an internet connection can edit- has sparked many discussions about knowledge construction, such as the politics behind truth, the social construction of knowledge, the tyranny of epistemic expertism or populism, and so on. In these discussions, the Encyclopedia Britannica is often posed as the antithesis to Wikipedia. So it came as big news earlier this year that the Encyclopedia Britannica, the model of old-school expertism, is...