[lbo-talk] Speaking of grad school

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Thu Aug 23 05:59:22 PDT 2012


Andie_N: " I have been working with Kahnemann-style behavioral cognitive psychology for decades."

[WS:] I've been pretty much attracted to it as well. I did my graduate work with Eviatar Zerubavel @ Rutgers who emphasized the social determinants of cognitive framing (which in my opinion Kahneman tends to underplay) and I had the sincere intention of pursuing this line of investigation (my piece on constructing historical narratives was even quoted by Eviatar in one of his books.) However, I got an offer from the JHU to work on the nonprofit sector, which changed my orientation quite a bit.

One of important aspects of that change is the data type one needs to conduct research. Eviatar often emphasized that he does not need expensive data assembly instruments - all he needs is to observe people in every day interaction and make proper analysis of what he sees (an advice that I took quite seriously.) OTOH, most social science research is highly dependent on expensive data collection mechanisms (surveys, etc.) - a lot of which is crap anyway.

This had an important consequence for my academic career. We are running out of grant money and chances are I will be looking for a job in January (I am non-tenured so they need to give me only a three month notice, for tenured folks it is 12 months) . Had I focused on the cognitive sociology stuff instead, chances are I would not have this problem. But on the up side, I've had a chance to see quite a bit of the world while doing this expensive data assembly, which one does not normally do when one just observes everyday life interaction.

-- Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."



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