The Social Breakdown

Our podcast begins TODAY! Our debut episode is live!! You can listen below. Today’s episode is SOC100 – “You’re all sociologists!”

A note on how our podcast is structured. We’re going to be operating on a semester schedule, just as any class at any university. Essentially, the semesters will be our ‘seasons’. Our first season that we’re doing is the Fall 2017 semester, and we will continue into Spring 2018 and so forth. This means that we’ll be following the college schedule and taking the same holidays, etc. since we are students and teachers ourselves.

For each episode, we will be providing an abstract (a short summary), a list of keywords, and resources (readings, scholars, websites, etc. that we discuss in the episode). This is is similar to what an academic journal article provides the reader for additional information. Now, onto the debut episode!

Abstract

We are all part of the social world, but what does that mean and, wait, what is sociology? This week’s episode includes personal perspectives from Dr. Penn Pantumsinchai and 2 Dr’s in training, Ellen Meiser and Omar Bird defining sociology – what it is and what it isn’t, as well as explaining the goals of public sociology. If you’re concerned with the human condition and examining the social world, this is the podcast for you! We’re all sociologist one way or another – want to know how? Tune in by streaming or downloading the episode below!

Keywords

Sociological imagination, public sociology, the sociological perspective, sociology, society

Resources:

1. 1. Murray Edelman’s Constructing the Political Spectacle (1988): “Meaning springs from interactions with others, not from inside an isolated individual’s head” (p. 107) 
   2. Herbert Gans (2015) “Public Sociology and its Publics”(PDF file):
      1. 1. “Any sociological writing or other product created by sociologists that obtains the attention of some of the publics that make up the general public. The writing can be a book, or an article, or even a few paragraphs reporting a new idea or finding. The other products may be created in any of the ever increasing number of communication outlets, from radio and television to the latest websites, search engines and social media. A podcast lecture, and even a summary of a lecture may already reach more of the public than anything we write.”
   3. Dr. Karen Kelsky’s website TheProfessorIsIn.com 
   4. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s tweet about sociology and physics
   5. A quick bio on Auguste Comte, the creator of the word, “sociology”
   6. Examples of Public Sociology:
      • Freakonomics radio and podcast
      • Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance
      • Matthew Desmond’sEvicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
      • Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
      • The weekly radio show The Measurement of Everyday Life on WNCU
      • This American Life radio and podcast

Comment down below what you thought of the episode! What would you like to hear about in the future? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates!