{"id":3782,"date":"2016-02-08T12:44:57","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T17:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/?p=3782"},"modified":"2016-02-08T16:50:24","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T21:50:24","slug":"taking-good-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/2016\/02\/08\/taking-good-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Good Risks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Flickr<\/a>
Flickr Photo by Frank Kovalchek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When\u00a0universities invite me to visit, I often do\u00a0a second talk for graduate students on \u201csafe and risky research agendas.\u201d Many students around the country seem stuck between the jobs crisis of the recent past and an uncertain future of disruptive technology, tenure battles, and mounting student debt. Maybe it\u2019s not surprising, then, that many of our best and brightest seem\u00a0to oscillate between a full-on \u201cstrategic\u201d concern for maximizing their employability\u00a0and a full-on utopian disregard for their market prospects. When they ask for advice, I first advise\u00a0them that not all advice is good <\/em>advice. But I do suggest they invest a bit more in teaching and that they consciously pursue both a safe and a risky research agenda. Such advice, I hope, will be good for them as individuals and good for the collective sociological enterprise.<\/p>\n

By safe <\/em>agenda, I\u2019m referring to a line of research in which the student builds up specific authority and expertise in an established topic or area. This can arise from long-term interest in a subject or intensive interest stemming from dissertation or research assistant work. Once one has written a paper or two in an area, the start-up costs <\/em>of publishing an additional piece\u00a0diminish \u2013 it isn\u2019t as though they have to master a completely new field with every article. They are also likely to find an established and active research literature <\/em>surrounding their safe agenda, with obvious next steps to pursue. This means that it is pretty easy to identify which journals will be interested in a study, the editors can readily identify knowledgeable experts to review it, and the reviews will be relatively consistent and predictable<\/em>. Pursuing a safe agenda in a series of book or article publications is likely the single best way to establish a reputation as an expert and authority<\/em> in a field or subfield \u2013 and that <\/em>can lead to jobs and promotions. In short, \u201csafe\u201d in this context represents\u00a0the foundational work of good social science, rather than, say, boring or easy research.<\/p>\n

Risky<\/em> agendas, in contrast, tend to be messier. The field might be new<\/em> to the researcher and her advisors, so the start-up costs are higher. There may be few good studies<\/em> to draw upon, or perhaps a lot of the action on the topic is taking place in other fields<\/em> or disciplines. This means she\u00a0will likely need to frame <\/em>her research in ways that convince people in the field they should<\/em> be interested in the topic. This isn’t an easy process. When a reviewer told Jason Houle that his research on debt was not sociology, for example, he suggested creating\u00a0a new journal: The American Journal of Not Sociology<\/em>. Even when successful in framing the article for sociology, such work tends to elicit polarized<\/em> reviews and evaluations. Moreover, there is little agreement on the \u201cnext logical steps\u201d to be taken and there is no consensus that even the very best work\u00a0on the topic merits publication or funding. Still, if and when such\u00a0research is published, the author tends to develop a reputation as a \u201cmover and a shaker\u201d with fresh ideas and energy.<\/p>\n

Research time is scarce for social scientists, but I try to reserve at least 10 percent of my research energies for my risky agenda. This includes new ideas with a high probability of immediate failure\u00a0and\/or\u00a0quixotic ideas that will not pay off for years or even decades. This is because I most admire the sociologists (and artists, for that matter) who somehow manage to sustain a safe and a risky agenda throughout their careers. Over time, they\u2019ve developed\u00a0well-earned\u00a0reputations and careers as both productive \u201cfinishers\u201d <\/em>and creative wild-cards.<\/em>\u00a0Perhaps fields and disciplines also prosper when they simultaneously create space for safe and risky agendas.<\/em> As Wayne Coyne once said, \u201cIt’s probably a good thing to be considered stable, but with a capacity for madness.\u201d I’d wager that\u00a0the same holds true for individual sociologists and for sociology as a collective enterprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When\u00a0universities invite me to visit, I often do\u00a0a second talk for graduate students on \u201csafe and risky research agendas.\u201d Many students around the country seem stuck between the jobs crisis of the recent past and an uncertain future of disruptive technology, tenure battles, and mounting student debt. Maybe it\u2019s not surprising, then, that many of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27054,27053],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-of-uggen","category-sketches-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2016\/02\/TRF_fire_dancer.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3782"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3796,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782\/revisions\/3796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}