methods

This episode we talk to Joel Best, author of popular, accessible sociology books such as Damned Lies and Statistics, Everyone’s a Winner, and hot off the presses, a brand new Social Problems textbook from W.W. Norton.

Download Office Hours #50.

This episode is the first Drop In: a new, shorter style of Office Hours episodes that we’ll be mixing into the podcast every so often alongside our longer episodes. Our first Drop In guest, Matt Snodgrass, discusses his recent Criminology article, Does the Time Cause the Crime?

Download Office Hours #42

In this epsiode, we talk with Neal Caren and Sarah Gaby about their research on the Occupy Movement’s presence on social networking sites. Topics include the methodological promises and challenges of studying popular sites like Facebook as well as the potential of online social networking for fostering social change. This conversation was part of a Roundtable discussion on The Society Pages on social scientists studying social movements.

Download Office Hours #41.

This week we talk with Corey Shdaimah, author of Negotiating Justice: Progressive Lawyering, Low-Income Clients, and the Quest for Social Change. Shdaimah examines how the themes central to progressive lawyering—autonomy, collaboration, transformation, and social change—look on the ground, in the legal services office. We discuss the ethnographic methods she used for this research, and how lawyers and clients navigate their relationships with one another.

Download Office Hours #33

This week we talk with Elijah Anderson, author of The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life. With urban ethnographies like Streetwise, A Place on the Corner, and Code of the Street, Anderson has captured the racial micropolitics that occurs in everyday urban life, highlighting the subtle rules and norms that guide interaction between whites, African Americans, and members of other ethnic groups. In his new book, Anderson returns to familiar territory, though this time he calls attention to parts of the city where more inclusive street behaviors are taking form. “Cosmopolitan canopies” are unique urban spaces that have a street culture that celebrates civility and mutual respect for difference, and Anderson argues they contribute to a broader cultural acceptance around race and diversity.

Sorry, we had to remove this episode. Watch this post for a replacement in the future.

We sit down with Hans Rosling for a discussion about how visual graphics can unveil the underlying beauty of data. Highlights include a discussion of the history behind Rosling’s gapminder, who is leading the pack on adopting a “fact-based worldview,” the work that goes into Rosling’s famous TED Talks, and the historical relationship between Sweden and the US (and Minnesota, in particular).

A special thanks goes to the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. Rosling spoke at Minnesota as part of their Momentum 2011 series and they were kind enough to allow us to interview him as well.

Download Office Hours #24

For this episode, Sarah met up with Charis Kubrin at the 2010 American Society of Criminology meetings, where they talked about about public criminology, culture, and measurement strategies.

Download Office Hours #19!

This episode, Jesse visits with Robert M. Groves, Director of the United States Census Bureau. Topics include why our census takes a full sample and how we pull it off, how we count tough populations like undocumented migrants and the homeless, and controversies over racial identification and the role of the state in the census.

Download Office Hours #8!

This week, we talk with Jeremy Freese about sociology and genetics. Topics include: why sociology and behavioral genetics need one another, why sociologists have been too hesitant to participate in interdisciplinary research, and how the complexities of gene-environment interdependence are stretching our imaginations as scientists and changing the way we think about causation.

If you like what you hear in this episode, this interview is part of an ongoing series on genetics, health, and sociology here at Office Hours. Past guests include Allan Horwitz, Peter Conrad, and Thomas Bouchard, with more on the way!

And the Society Page of the Week: ThickCulture’s Jose Marchial takes on Malcolm Gladwell’s take on Social Networking and Social Movements.

Download Office Hours #6 now!