Soc 791aBFall, 2003

Tuesdays 4:10-7:00 pm. Tompkins G125

Course web page: http://sasw.chass.ncsu.edu/jeff/courses/contemp/index.htm

Instructors: 
 

Jeff Leiter	515-9009	338 1911 Bldg.	Jeff_leiter@ncsu.edu
	Web page	http://sasw.chass.ncsu.edu/jeff/leiter.htm
	Office hours	Wednesdays 1-2, Thursdays 2-3
Don Tomaskovic-Devey	515-9022	330 1911 Bldg.	Don_Tomaskovic-Devey@ncsu.edu
	Office hours	by appointment
Jen Nooney	513-4630	211 1911 Bldg.	Jenooney@server.sasw.ncsu.edu
	Office hours	Mondays 3-5 and Tuesdays 3-4

Welcome to Contemporary Sociology and to the graduate program at NC State.This is an innovative course designed especially for entering graduate students.We will assume nothing about your background, just that you are the kind of strong and committed student we are eager to have in this program.The course is designed to encourage you in your enthusiasm and commitment to sociology as an intellectual endeavor and as a profession.

This is a program that welcomes and thrives on diversity.We mean: 

$diversity in Asocial location@B gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation

$diversity in kind of previous educational experiences

$diversity in preferred theories and research methodologies

$diversity in professional aspirationsBacademic, applied research, government, advocacy

The course design represents the graduate program through diversity in its materials, authors, and activities.(Because the program does have important socialization and professionalization goals, you will probably experience some tension between diversity and homogenization throughout your graduate training, especially the early, pre-dissertation phases.In the end, you will put your own, individual stamp on your training.)

An unusual feature of this course is the participation along with the regular students of more than one instructor.Don Tomaskovic-Devey, our graduate director, and Jen Nooney, an advanced graduate student, have joined Jeff Leiter as your instructional team.Our hope is that this team will diversify the voices in the class, identify pedagogical opportunities that would otherwise be missed, and provide a model of collaboration for you.Jen is also available to you as a Aback channel@ to discuss concerns about the course you would prefer, for any reason, not to express directly to one of the professors.

The Course's Main Sections

Our course has several sections, each with its own objectives.

Getting Started with Research.We want you to start thinking of yourself as a researcher from the beginning of your graduate training rather than waiting until you start your master's thesis or dissertation.The initial stages of the research process involve identifying a problem, reviewing the relevant literature, and formulating a worthwhile researchable question.These lay the foundation for research design, data collection, data analysis, writing, and publishing.We are going to move through the initial stages to give you a taste for the research activities you will be engaged in later and to get you started developing the important skills involved.You may be able to use the substantive research you do in our course later on.

Health Care Reform.Wechose this substantive area to study in detail because of its current importance and the way it combines issues of inequality and social policy.We want to underline the ways in which good sociological research can inform social policy about social problems.At the same time, we want to illustrate the usefulness of various research methods, from interviews, to observation, to surveys.And, we want you to appreciate the insights that can come from non-scholarly materials, so we have included newspaper articles, a video, and even poetry.

Professional Ethics.Ethical considerations have been important to sociologists for a long time, but they have only surfaced explicitly in graduate programs more recently.The university, prodded by the federal government, is moving to require ethics training in all graduate programs. We embrace this trend and have inserted ethics, regarding both teaching and research, into our course.Training modules have been developed and posted on the web; we are using several of these modules along with conventionally published articles.

Public Discourse.Many, perhaps increasing numbers of sociologists are trying to bring their thinking and their research to bear on the search for solutions to social problems.Many are writing for non-scholarly audiences.The basis of such efforts must be solid research, which is the main focus of your graduate training.We want to expose you to the prospects for sociologists to participate in public discourse about social problems and, indeed, to our own faculty members' writings in this vein.

Introduction to Faculty Members and to Their Research Activities.The department has a large and distinguished faculty.You need to learn who they are and what they study, in part so that you can initiate contact with those who may help you in your own research.In addition, we want you to have a concrete appreciation for the research process, from the conception of an idea to eventual publication, a process that often includes hard decisions and choices and wrong turns. For these reasons, we have arranged for a member of the faculty to spend about an hour with our class almost each week.They are each selecting one of their articles for you to read-this is part of the preparation for the class when the faculty member comes.The faculty member will tell you how the article came to be and lead you in discussion of its content.You should come to class with at least one question about the article to ask.Part of the writing for the class is a one-page abstract of each article, which you will hand in at the next class after it is discussed.Writing such abstracts is part of many of our graduate courses, but you typically write them on the basis of your reading, without benefit of the discussion.

Grading

Your course work will be evaluated and graded with the standard letter grades.In a typical class, most grades will be B, meaning quite satisfactory.A is reserved for truly excellent work, but we will give as many A's as are earned (that is, we do not grade on a curve).C is not a satisfactory grade for graduate work; we would be surprised and disappointed if anyone received a C for the course.

A quarter of your grade will reflect your participation in class discussions; this is quite a high proportion and signals high expectations for an active stance on your part. A quarter of your grade will be based on the abstracts you write from visiting faculty members' articles. The remaining half of your grade will come from your papers, which are detailed below.

Your Writing

Writing will be a central activity in your graduate program and, in all likelihood, in your professional life after graduate school, as well.Writing will be important to this course, too.We will have a mixture of writing assignments that are typical of other courses you will take (e.g., literature review) and others that are not typical, but reflect additional course objectives (e.g., op ed article). You will write more papers for this course than for most others, but ours will be shorter.The papers are detailed after the schedule of assignments.

Basic Understandings

It goes almost without saying that harassment of any sort, including sexual or racial harassment, is inconsistent with the free inquiry we will pursue together and is illegal.If you experience or witness such harassment, please alert the instructor or the department=s Director of Graduate Programs or Head.If you have any questions about appropriate ways to meet the requirements of academic honesty to give credit when you use the words, ideas, or images of others, we will be happy to talk with you.If you have a documented disability, we will work with you to make appropriate accommodations.

The university's official positions on these matters can be found at the following web sites:

Disabilities:http://www.ncsu.edu/equal_op/dss

Harassment:http://www.ncsu.edu/equal_op/

Academic honesty:http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/ncsulegal/41.03-codeof.htm

Schedule of Readings, Assignments, and Activities

Sources: 

You should buy: Lovitts, Barbara. 2001. Leaving the Ivory Tower. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

The remaining readings are available on line, either through the library's on-line access to the journal or through the library=s electronic reserve system.For an on-line article, use the library data base indicated in parentheses on this schedule, or enter the journal title on the library's web page and follow the directions for electronic access.For electronic reserve, go to www.lib.ncsu.edu, then go to course reserves, then SOC791a.

August 26:

Talking about the orientation

Introduction to the course

Getting started on researchBstep 1: identifying a research problemBclass activity modeling this step

Lovitts, Leaving the Ivory Tower, chapters 1-4.

September 2:

Faculty guest-Ted Greenstein. 2000. "Economic Dependence, Gender, and the Divisoin of Labor in the Home: A Replication and Extension." Journal of Marriage and the Family 62: 322-35. [electronic reserve]

Lovitts, Leaving the Ivory Tower, chapters 5-7

Getting started on researchBstep 2: getting oriented in the literatureBclass activity: using Sociological Abstracts

September 9:

Faculty guestBVirginiaAldige et al. 2002. "Impact of Outpatient Commitment on Victimization of People with Severe Mental illness."American Journal of Psychiatry 159:8 (August): 1403-1411. (4:10) [electronic reserve]

Health care reform: historical and cross-national background

Mechanic, D. 1994.Inescapable Decisions. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. (Chapter 1, pgs. 1-52, "The American Medical Care System") [electronic reserve]

The following are from American Journal of Public Health, 2003, 93(1) [Academic Search Elite]

Vladeck B. "Universal Health Insurance in the U.S.: Reflections on the Past, the Present, and the Future" pp. 16-19

Deber. R. "Health Care Reform: Lessons from Canada" pp. 20-24

Elias, P. and A. Cohn. "Health Care Reform in Brazil: Lessons to Consider" pp. 44-47

Lee, J. "Health Care Reform in South Korea: Success or Failure?" pp. 48-51

Getting started on researchBpaper 1 due

September 16:

Faculty guest-Barbara Risman. 2001. "After the Sexual Revolution: Gender Politics in Teen Dating" (with Pepper Schwartz). Contexts 1:1 (Spring): 16-24. [electronic reserve]

Health care reform through various methodologies: the Oregon experiment 

Fox, D. and H. Leichter. 1994. "Rationing Care in Oregon: The New Accountability" in Five States That Could Not Wait (D. Fox and J. Iglehart, eds.) Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. [electronic reserve]

Ambrosio, R., F. Mondeaux, R. Gabriel, and K. Laws. 2003. "Oregon's Transition to a Managed Care Model for Medicaid-Funded Substance Abuse Treatment: Steamrolling the Glass Menagerie." Health and Social Work 28(2): 126-136. [InfoTrac One File]

Mitchell, J., S. Haber, G. Khatutsky, and S. Donoghue. 2002. "Impact of the Oregon Health Plan on Access and Satisfaction of Adults with Low Income" Health Services Research 37(1): 19-39. [Blackwell Synergy or name of journal]

Getting started on researchBpaper 2 due; step 3: finding patterns in the literature--class activity: the Social Science Citation Index

Faculty guest-Jerry Jacka. 2001. "Coca Cola and Kolo: Land, Ancestors, and Development." Anthropology Today 17(4):3-8. [Academic Search Elite]

Health care reform: non-scholarly media [all on electronic reserve]

Berlin, Richard. 1997. "Before the Malpractice Suit" Psychiatric Times 14:12 (December).

Berlin, Richard. 2002. "All the Sad Doctors" Psychiatric Times 19:7 (July).

Balzar, J. 2001. "Consider This Cure for What's Ailing Us: Why Are We So Afraid of Managing Our Own Health Care Through Our Government, Anyway?" Los Angeles Times, July 8, M-5.

Gingrich, N., and R. Bachman. 2003. "Health Care: Boomers Will Revitalize an Aged, Ineffective System." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 30, A15.

"Healthcare Crisis: Who's At Risk?" PBS (move to 2324 D.H. Hill Library for 6 pm showing)

September 30:

Faculty guest-Stacy DeCoster. 2001. "The Relationship between Law Violation and Depression: An Interactionist Analysis (with Karen Heimer)." Criminology 39: 799-836. [electronic reserve]

Health care reform: the current debate and emerging issues

Kim, S. 2001. Pros and Cons: Social Policy Debates of Our Time. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon. (Chapter 5, pp. 104-147, "Health Care Reform") [electronic reserve under "Nooney"]

Raffel, M. 1997. "Dominant Issues: Convergence, Decentralization, Competition, and Health Services" in Health Care and Reform in Industrialized Countries (M. Raffel, ed), University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 291-303. [electronic reserve]

Woolhandler, Steffie, David U. Himmelstein, Marcia Angell, and Quentin D. young. 2003. "Proposal of the Physicians' Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance." Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 290:6 (August 13): 798-805 [enter journal name]

Getting started on researchBpaper 3 due;step 4: What is a current debate in the literature?

October 7:

Faculty guest-- Rodney L. "Rod" Engen. 2000. "The Power to Punish: discretion and Sentencing Reform in the War on Drugs." American Journal of Sociology 105: 1357-95 (with Sara Steen).[JSTOR or electronic reserve]

Health care reform: your position--draft of paper 4 due

Where is sociology going and where should it go?

Smith-Lovin, Lynn. 1999. "Core Concepts and Common Ground: The Relational Basis of Our Discipline." Social Forces, 78: 1-23. [JSTOR]

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2000."Where Should Sociologists Be Heading?" Contemporary Sociology 29:306-8. [electronic reserve]

Offering constructive criticism to colleagues

Basic principles

October 14:

Faculty guest-Melvin Thomas. 1994. "Discrimination Over the Life Course: A Synthetic Cohort Analysis of Earnings Differences Between Black and White Males, 1940-1990." Social Problems 41: 608-28 (with Cedric Herring and Hayward Derrick Horton). [Expanded Academic ASAP]

Constructive criticism: paper 5 due (2 copies-1 for student colleague, 1for instructors); note that this is not a blind review.

Professional Ethics:Ethical Issues in Teaching and Introduction to Research Ethics

Hanson, Karen. 1996. "Between Apathy and Advocacy: Teaching and Modeling Ethical Reflection." Pp. 33-36 in Ethical Dimensions of College and University Teching: Understanding and Honoring the Special Relationship Between Teachers and Students. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. [electronic reserve]

Grauerholz, Elizabeth and Stacey Copenhaver. 1994. AWhen the Personal Becomes Problematic: The Ethics of Using Experiential Teaching.@Teaching Sociology 22:319-28. [electronic reserve]

AIntroduction to the Modules@ (http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/Grad/ethics)

Class activity and discussion: Write on an ethical dilemma you have faced; then, share in small groups.In class discussion, apply categories of ethical reasoning to teaching.

October 21:

Faculty guest-Ronald Wimberley. 1978. "Dimensions of Commitment: Generalizing from Religion to Politics." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 17: 225-40. [electronic reserve]

Getting started on researchBpaper 6 due; step 5: Formulating a research worthy and researchable questionBclass activity

Professional Ethics: Specific Ethical Issues in Research

Scarce, Rik. 1995. "Scholarly Ethics and Courtroom Antics: Where Researchers Stand in the Eyes of the Law." The American Sociologist (Spring): 87-112. [Academic Search Elite]

Leo, Richard A. 1995. Trial and Tribulations: Courts, Ethnography, and the Need for an Evidentiary Privilege for Academic Researchers." The American Sociologist (Spring):113-34. [Academic Search Elite]

ARightdoing and Misconduct in Research@ (http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/Grad/ethics)

Class activity: Break into groups to discuss differences between the cases and form an opinion on what the researchers should have done, whether we ought to have a privilege, or both.

October 28:

Faculty guest- Maxine Atkinson. 2001. "The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." Social Forces 79: 1217-30. [electronic reserve]

Looking ahead to course selections for next semester

Professional Ethics: Week 3: Institutional Review and Protection of Human Subjects in Research

AHuman Participants in Research@ (http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/Grad/ethics)

Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. 1994.AInformed Consent in Anthropological Research: We Are Not Exempt.@Human Organization 53 (Spring): 1-10. [electronic reserve]

Discussion about experiences with protection of human subjects (as researcher or as subject) and possible human subjects issues in research you are exploring.

November 4:

Faculty guestB Michael Schwalbe. 2000. "Generic Processes in the Reproduction of Inequality: an Interactionist Analysis" (with Sandra Godwin, Daphne Holden, Douglas Schrock, Shealy Thompson, and Michele Wolkomir, all from our graduate program). Social Forces 79: 419-52. [JSTOR]

Sociological Writing, Social Critique, and Public Discourse

Wilson, William Julius, AEngaging Publics in Sociological Dialogue through the Media.@CS 27:5 (September, 1998): 435-38. [electronic reserve]

Schwartz, Pepper, AStage Fright or Death Wish: Sociology in the Mass Media.@ CS 27:5 (September, 1998): 439-45. [electronic reserve]

Ritzer, George, AWriting to be Read: Changing the Culture and Reward Structure of American Sociology.@ CS 27:5 (September, 1998): 446-53. [electronic reserve]

Gaines, Donna, AResurrecting Sociology as a Vocation.@ CS 27:5 (September, 1998): 454-57. [electronic reserve]

Getting started on research--paper 7 due; Step 6: Using what you are learning to address a non-scholarly audienceBdistribute set of op ed pieces by faculty members for discussion next week.

November 11:

Faculty guest-Eric Woodrum. 1988. "Determinants of Moral Attitudes." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 27: 553-73. [electronic reserve]

How scholarly literatures develop

Braverman, Harry. 1998 [1974]."Scientific Management." Pp. 59-85 (chapter 4) in Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. [electronic reserve]

Burawoy, Michael. 1979. "Thirty Years of Making Out." Pp. 46-73 (chapter 4) in Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capital. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [electronic reserve]

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1983. "Feeling Management: From Private to Commercial Uses." Pp. 89-136 (chapter 6) in The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. [electronic reserve]

Getting started on research: step 6:Using what you are learning to address a non-scholarly audience-discuss set of op ed pieces by faculty members.Write one collectively on health care reform.

Taking stock-generate questions for next week's panel

November 18:

Faculty guestBWilliam R. Smith, Sharon Glave Frazee, and Elizabeth L. Davison. 2000. "Furthering the integration of Routine Activity and social Disorganization Theories: Small Units of Analysis and the Study of Street Robbery as a Diffusion Process." Criminology 38:2 (May): 489-523. [electronic reserve]

Getting started on research--paper 8 due

Graduate student panel: survival strategies, "normal progress," relations with faculty

November 25:

Faculty guest- Anne Schiller. 2001. "Talking Heads: Capturing DayakDeathways on Film." American Ethnologist 28: 32-55. (12:25) [Wilson OmniFile]

Levels of analysis: individual, interactional, organizational, community

Hughes, Michael and David H. Demo. 1989. "Self-Perceptions of Black Americans:Self-Esteem and Personal Efficacy." American Journal of Sociology 95: 132-59. [JSTOR]

Anderson, Elijah. 1999. "Campaigning for Respect." Pp. 66-106 (chapter 2) in Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: Norton. [electronic reserve]

Collins, Sharon M. 1997. Black Corporate Executives: The Making and Breaking of a Black Middle Class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Excerpted in Wharton, Amy S. 2002.Working in America (second edition). Boston: McGraw-Hill.Pp. 394-405. [electronic reserve]

Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. "The Construction of the Ghetto." Pp. 17-59 (chapter 2) in American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. [electronic reserve]

December 2:

Faculty guest- Charles Tittle.2001. "IQ and Stratification: An Empirical Evaluation of Herrnstein and Murray's Social Change Argument" (with Thomas Rotolo). Social Forces 79: 1-28. [electronic reserve]

Looking ahead to next semester

Course evaluation

Paper Assignments

Papers should be no longer than 3 pages, double spaced, 12 point type.Edit your work to meet this maximum.

1. Identify a problem for your research.Turn a topic into a question.Focus your interests. Suggestions:

Bwhat=s important about this topic? Can you put this topic in C.W. Mills terms of private troubles (yours?) and public problems?

Bwhat=s puzzling about this topic?Pose this puzzle as a question.

--what is a general sociological question of which yours is a specific example? 

Bhow might research on this question have public policy implications?

2. Get oriented in the literature on your research problem (credit only grading).

Bfind a review article, recent if possible: annuals, handbooks

Bin what journal(s) is the literature concentrated (if any)? 

Bmake a list of the references you have found.Use ASA format.

3. Find patterns in the literature on your research problem (based on reading about six articles, which may well be unrepresentative)

Bdoes this literature appear to have separate parts?What are they? (required)

Bfind an article or book that is often cited and appears to be the place from which many subsequent articles take off.Social Sciences Citation Index.

Bis there a common or dominant theoretical approach in the literature?

Bis there a common methodological approach?Does one or a few data sets get used over and over?

Bwho appear to be the leading scholars?

4. Where do you stand on health care reform? Support your position with evidence from the diverse materials we have considered in the last few weeks.

5. Constructive criticism of a classmate's draft.

6.Find a few (i.e., 2-3) recent (i.e., within the last 2-3 years) works in the area you are researching.What do they agree on?What do they disagree on?What do you think about these matters (especially where they disagree)? 

7. Formulating a research worthy and researchable question.Here are several ways/aspects:

What is the outcome/consequence/effect/dependent variable that you most want to understand?

Is there a solid piece of research already published that you would like to replicate or extend?How?

Would you like to apply a different method or come at it from a different theoretical orientation?How?

Can you put your question in explicitly causal terms?

Is there a social setting or social process that would be worthwhile studying in depth?

What is feasible within the time and money constraints you face as a graduate student at your stage in the program (masters or doctoral)?

8.Write an op-ed piece that draws upon some aspect of the literature on your research question.