Is sociology worth it in this day and age? Yes or no?

Have two sons who just finished a sociology course taught online (they're high school, dual enrolled). I'm not particularly political (though they are, as is common among somewhat pretentious teenage boys--and they lean pretty hard right, as I did back in the 80s and 90s) and they would go apoplectic on a weekly basis on how biased their course was. A significant part of the curriculum was discussion forums and my oldest son, who'd been hitting the leftist softballs that the prof set up each week by playing along with the Marxist party line (to preserve his high-GPA, the little pragmatist), decided one week to do something a little different and take a contrary stance, more in line with his actual political views, and that was the only week out of the entire 16 where he didn't get max credit for the forum grade--no surprise! Basically, according to my sons, the curriculum went as follows:

If you are of Euro ancestry, you are ipso facto privileged;
Privilege is evil;
Therefore, those of Euro ancestry are ipso facto evil.

By the way, my sons are unanimous that the prof in question, an adjunct, was the least competent they'd ever had, seemed to care the least about students of any prof they'd ever had, just mailed it in apparently without regard to any desire but collecting a paycheck with as little effort as possible, wouldn't respond to emails (sometimes took weeks to get a response--if you got one at all), perpetually made grading errors, and generally refused to acknowledge any imperfection even when he'd made obvious and egregious mistakes. They also had serious misgivings about the guy's ethics (unrelated to his political stance, but I don't want to go into it here because we're scheduling a meeting with the dean to discuss this in the near future).

This yahoo lines up in part with my undegrad sociology experience--in another manner not at all. I had a prof who was openly and unabashedly a hardcore Marxist. On the other hand, he was brilliant, highly competent and actually a pretty good guy with one of the greatest names I've ever heard: https://www.unr.edu/international/2018-19-international-activities-committee-membership/berch-berberoglu

 

Thanks. I’m enjoying our conversation on this (necessarily subjective) topic.

I’m in a humanities field that sometimes has cross-pollination with sociology, and the impression I have from talking to sociologists is that there was never an equal distribution of political or ideological views in the field. This jibes with what Heirophant wrote above about it being a relatively new discipline, created as a hybrid of the sciences and humanities with a social change purpose in mind. In other words, one side was very much dominant from the first, and has squeezed out internal competitors. I don’t think this is a case of peevish conservative types taking their ball and going home, but rather that the selection and grooming processes have favoured the dominant party within the field to the point where over time one half of the political or ideological spectrum has been rendered insignificant there.

 

It sounds like you have a better grasp of the realities of this situation than I do but perhaps there's something left out. The field of Sociology as with all of the Humanities exists in a political context. And it might exist squarely on the left side of the political spectrum. But perhaps, as you said, Sociology has always been "left," perhaps this is simply because more people are left and that as you move up the scale of education the percentage of people on the left increases.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/27/study-finds-those-graduate-education-are-far-more-liberal-peers

 

This is undeniably true, though you could hardly tell looking around the business school where I teach. About the only leftists you'll find are the economists.

 

Here's an article from the National Review that might be of interest in this context

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/higher-education-decline-propaganda-intolerance/

 

Wow oh wow didn't realize the thread got this many replies... Oh geesh


As for the biases, I don't care because I am in it for the education, just hoping I don't have to deal with people whining about multiculturalism, white privilege, toxic masculinity and radical Islam 247, really you could say the field is a breeding ground for white supremacists and skinheads and I still wouldn't care I am in it for the education


Well then if I am going to get into the field I am going to have to let go a bit of my hive mentality, but the urge to have a hive mentality is that strong unfortunately.

 

Sociology is not a humanities subject; it's a social science. People have to accept that certain personalities are drawn to certain fields. All of the social sciences are left-leaning. Also, most natural scientists (not just people who majored in science) are left-leaning. I posted a thread last year with the statistics.

Even in the red state of Texas, most of the coworkers I had in parole, counseling, and social services were left-leaning. There are just certain personalities that are incompatible with the helping professions. I listened to a radio program about research that revealed that biology accounts for about 34% of the difference in political ideologies.

 

Texas is really not as red as you think to begin with.
So hold on, what is really the better subject anyways. Humanities or social sciences?

 

Texas would be purple if voter turnout were higher.

Examples of humanities subjects: philosophy, religion, literature, and foreign languages. The humanities look at human cultures, and there are usually no experiments and not much crunching of data. History is often classified as a social science, but it fits in better with the humanities.

Examples of social sciences: sociology, political science, psychology, and economics. The social sciences study human behavior. Anthropology is often classified as a social science, but its two main sub-disciplines don't really fit in this category. Physical anthropology is more of a natural science because it's similar to the life sciences. Cultural anthropology is more humanities.

 

Parts of Texas are deep blue, like Austin.

 

No, they really don’t.

I have had successful careers in three diverse fields. These are not very closely related, and in fact many people would say they are starkly different. In your deterministic scheme, I suppose you might say they were fields with diametrically opposed personality types. Further, one of those fields is academia, where I regularly publish in three academic disciplines. Two could be said to be related, but the third is frequently portrayed as diametrically opposed to the others. Some, obsessed by pseudo-intellectual psychological categorizing, might say that scholars of discipline C are a distinct personality type. I don’t think I’m atypical. I think many people are inclined to work hard at what they find interesting or meaningful, and those interests may change over the course of years. There may be some who are drawn to a field and would identify their personality type as the determining factor (my goodness, that sounds like a Cosmopolitan quiz), but many others will disagree.

You may be thinking, “Wait, I invoked a sociological study that should end dialogue on the matter! Didn’t this individual realize that the subject is closed?” Hardly. In one of my past careers, I worked for the government. While in an administrative post, we did numerous statistical studies, and I realized how careful one had to be to not let unintentional bias influence the results. I watched as our agency hired an outside academic from a major university sociology department to statistically analyze some data and was shocked to see how blatantly he manipulated the data to massage the results towards desired outcomes. I have seen so many people, in government and in academia, lie with statistics that I really put very little weight on such studies. I am content to trust careful observation (which some might dismiss as anecdote) and reasoning ability leavened with experience (which some like Miss Bingley might dismiss as a certain conceited independence.)

Nakedly ideological rubbish. One (and arguably two) of the fields I worked in were “helping professions,” and a wide range of people of varied politics and personalities, who had in common the desire to help, were attracted there and thrived there. If you were abruptly making a reference to sociopaths, that’s out of place in this discussion.

Getting back to your point that people have to accept that certain personalities are drawn to certain fields, I disagree. From what I have seen and what I have heard from individuals whose judgement I trust, it is the internal policing of the discipline we’re talking about through selection and grooming that has brought sociology to its near-monolithic state. This ideological imperialism is becoming a problem in many more academic disciplines, and it’s leading many in the general public to mistrust academic institutions that appear to be less centers of research and learning and more indoctrination camps.

 

This response is based on miscomprehension of the statements. Certain personalities being drawn to certain fields is not the same as which individual will be successful in a particular job. I've had a lot of jobs that I did well in, and I absolutely hated them. Oftentimes, when people choose a college major for a field, they have little to no exposure to it, so there is practically no filtering at this level.

The major filtering that happens in K-12 is not based on personality; it's usually based on gender, intellect, and ethnicity. Things are changing now, but historically, girls were not encouraged to enter STEM fields. If a teacher thinks a student is bright, then he or she is more likely to challenge that student and encourage him or her to take on more difficult assignments. Studies have also shown that teachers usually have lower expectations of black students. When you have lower expectations, you don't challenge the student.

Psychology and sociology are electives in high school, and most students won't take them. The students who do take them usually have a strong interest in those subjects, and you can see that there are many commonalities between those students.

If you're an impatient person, then you're going to have a hard time working with people with disabilities. If you're quick-tempered, then you're likely going to receive complaints from students, customers, etc. If you're bad at picking up emotional queues, then you're going to struggle in social work or mental health. Most introverts hate jobs that require constant contact with large numbers of unknown people. That's just common sense.

 

Ok, so none of this is in my area but that has never stopped me before. Isn't it true that the "internal policing of the discipline" is being done by people. People with personalities. and that the consistency of these personalities is such that a "near-monolithic state" has been created. There would have to be remarkable consistency in the philosophy/personalities/ thinking process of these leaders in order to create a near-monolithic state. So these people have risen to power and created this nearly universal way of looking at things. This in turn creates a welcoming atmosphere for like-minded new comers. Haven't you just proven sanantone's point?

 

You made a good point. How does a discipline get to the point that a certain personality dominates? Did that personality type have a majority, and it became majority rules? That means the discipline mostly attracted one type of personality in the first place.

Did the upper-level positions become dominated by one personality type? How did that happen? Do these just happen to be the top performers in the field?

If you're a person driven by monetary rewards, why would you choose the helping professions? These are, normally, not high-paying jobs.

 

No, I don't think so. I and another member were posting about ideological similarity being enforced, where Sanantone is writing about “personality types” coming together through natural attraction and conflating the two categories. That forced metaphor strikes me as about as disingenuous as a cold war-era commissar claiming that the Soviet enjoyed complete freedom politically, but only certain personality types wanted to run for office, the ones drawn to the Communist Party.

All this intrusion of “personality types” smacks of biological determinism as well, which ignores the number of people who hold to one ideology in their twenties and another in their forties. Colleagues whose political or ideological views change due to life experience have found themselves unwelcome in their departments, despite their personalities remaining intact.

 

I thought it was quite clear that it is believed that biology accounts for 34% of the difference between ideologies. That leaves a lot of room for other influences such as life experiences and social influences.

People of various political ideologies have been studied, and it's been found that people within ideological groups tend to make similar lifestyle choices. There are also twin studies that provide strong evidence that biology plays a role in lifestyle choices. It is not "biological determinism." It is one factor that influences what people do. You're thinking in extremes, which is making your argument disingenuous.

Regardless of what you think about the research you haven't even read yet, it's likely to be more representative than your anecdotal experiences.

 

Surgeons tend to vote Republican, and pediatricians tend to vote Democratic. I guess the surgical residencies were hostile toward the liberals, and the pediatric residencies were hostile toward the conservatives. It has nothing to do with the fact that more women are drawn to pediatrics, and women tend to vote more for Democrats. It's all a conspiracy.

 

It seems that ideology and personality are not independent variables

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pops.12347

 

There are many studies out there that have shown a link between biology and political ideology. These studies have been done by psychologists, neuroscientists, political scientists, and biologists. John Hibbing has done some of the most interesting work in this area.

https://www.unl.edu/polphyslab/VITAE2014.pdf

 

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