Integrating sociology: Observations on race and gender relations in sociology graduate programs

Issues related to the integration of race within sociology doctoral programs were explored. Two sets of data were analyzed: open-ended interviews with 26 women of color graduate students and 92 questionnaires completed by Ph.D. programs on faculty, graduate courses, and expertise in race. Quantitative data show that faculty of color are likely to be the one member of their race in the department. EuroAmerican faculty are over-represented in the rank of Full Professor and Associate Professor and faculty of color are under-represented in the tenured ranks. Less than a quarter of departments included the study of race in required theory courses. Departments listing race and ethnicity as a specialty in the area did not always offer graduate courses in the field and courses that were offered did not necessarily focus specifically on U.S. race/ethnic/minority relations, but included international studies and broad topics in social organizations and stratification. Comments by a sample of women of color graduate students point out a number of critical issues: curricula that are outdated, ignore race, are monocultural, and look better in the catalog than in the classroom; faculty that are top-heavy with older White males; students discouraged from pursuing what attracted them to the academy in the first place; and students in conflicts with racial overtones over scarce resources and favors. Qualitative results show that women of color graduate students perceive the inclusion of students and faculty of color to include an acceptance of their racial and ethnic experience in the intellectual and social culture of the department. They linked the goal of integration of the student body and the faculty to be inseparable from integration of race into the curriculum in both required and nonrequired courses, and assigned readings.     

Durkheim's sociology and theories of degeneration

This Paper explores the relationshipbetween theories of degeneracy inspired by medicine and psychiatry in the nineteenth century and the sociological theory of Emile Durkheim. After briefly reviewing the main themes of degeneracy theory, there follows an analysis of Durkheim's writings of the 1880s and 1890s and 1890s on crime, suicide and birth-rates. The paper argues, first, that Durkheim's relationship to degeneracy theory is considerably more complex than is generally portrayed in the secondary literature and undergoes considerable modification over time: second, that Durkheim's theoretical efforts were not only aimed at sociological as opposed to biological explanations of the phenomena studied by theorists of degeneration, but also grounded a new normative understanding of these phenomena that was consonant with the humanitarian ideals of ethical individualism.     

A vision for sociology

His most recent books are Foundations of Social Theory,and Equality and Achievement in Education.He is also the author of Power and The Structure of Society,and The Asymetric Societyamong many other books.     

可误论、实在论与科学进步

为了突破近代西方哲学的认识论困境,皮尔士提出了一种可误主义的知识理论.但皮尔士并没有因此而放弃对客现真理的追求,他的实在论向人们表明在认识探究过程中,虽然没有任何可靠的基础给我们提供保证,但是,我们依然可以追求客观的真理(终极的实在).因为人类认识过程(尤其是科学进步过程)就是通向真理的"长征".就是不断向实在的趋同.     

Three Forms of Political Realism

In the recent study of international relations, political realism has, apparently, had as many supporters as detractors. Nonetheless, there seems to be a growing tendency to treat the categories of political realism as if they were passing the way of all flesh, destined to be replaced by system theory, transnationalism, Marxist structuralism, critical theory or whatever. One difficulty with this judgement is that political realism is not a single theoretical entity which can be refuted by single disconfirming instances. Nor is it an understanding of the subject rooted in the views of such well-known exponents of this school as Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Thompson, Martin Wight, Sir Herbert Butterfield, E. H. Carr or Raymond Aron. On the contrary, political realism is a conception of politics which stretches back to the great Indian thinker Kautilya and in fact constitutes a many-mansioned tradition of thought about international relations. Three aspects of that tradition are examined in this essay: Common-sense Realism, Concessional Realism and neo-Aristotelian Realism. These reflections are only very tangentially related to the debates in the 1950s and 1960s concerning realism. This essay focuses, rather, on certain neglected features of contrasting philosophies of science. The article concludes, somewhat tentatively, that neo-Aristotelian Realism is coherent and cogent and superior in important respects to what scientific empiricism has to offer.     

Coming to Grips with Realism

Retrieving Realism renders the joint philosophical goals of Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor into what is probably their final and most concise form. It has two main objectives: first, it aims to deconstruct the mediationalism that undergirds Western philosophy, and second, it endorses contact theory, or embodied/embedded coping, as an alternative. In this essay, I present the book’s most salient themes and reveal areas that are ripe for further philosophical consideration. I also direct the reader to the work’s genuine ontological challenge: how to come to grips with contact theory beyond the borders of epistemology.     

Long-Term Capital Management and the sociology of arbitrage

Arbitrage is a key process in the practice of financial markets and in their theoretical depiction: it allows markets to be posited as efficient without all investors being assumed to be rational. This article explores the sociology of arbitrage by means of an examination of the arbitrageurs, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). LTCM's 1998 crisis is analysed using both qualitative, interview-based data and quantitative examination of price movements. It is suggested that the roots of the crisis lay in an unstable pattern of imitation that had developed in the markets within which LTCM operated. As the resulting 'superportfolio' began to unravel, arbitrageurs other than LTCM fled the market, even as arbitrage opportunities became more attractive, causing huge price movements against LTCM. Three features of the sociology of arbitrage are discussed: its conduct by people often personally known to each other; the possibility and consequences of imitation; and the limits on the capacity of arbitrage to close price discrepancies. It is suggested that by 1998 imitative arbitrage formed a 'global microstructure' in the sense of Knorr Cetina and Bruegger.     

Realism and Reform in Rousseau's Constitutional Projects for Poland and Corsica

Of all of the criticisms leveled against Rousseau's practical political writings few have been as pervasive as the charge of intentional utopianism. Over the years this charge has not gone entirely unanswered but, for the most part, the scholarly response has been to identify these works' realism solely in terms of Rousseau's desire to educate a corrupt Europe morally. In this essay, I reexamine the question of utopianism in Considérations sur le Gouvernement de Pologne and Projet pour la Corse to argue that the most egregiously fanciful or eccentric recommendations in these works actually demonstrate evidence of the philosopher's practicality and seriousness about constitutional reform in Poland and Corsica. To appreciate this realism though, readers must turn to Rousseau's opaque remarks about opinion's relationship to the laws in the Lettre à d'Alembert and other writings.