Greetings all:

I'm currently teaching sociology at a small liberal arts college.  We're
working on building up the "applied" aspects of the program.  I taught full
time when I was fresh out of grad school then took a full-time job outside
of academics for a decade, before returning to teaching full-time this past
fall.

My interests are pretty diverse.  I've worked as a contractor supporting
NATO, a social science analyst/intern at the National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development, Web master of a sociology site, and a Virginia
State Police Trooper.  I've focused on topics as diverse as adoption to
group decision support systems.  That's one of the great things about
sociology - you should never get bored!

Someone told me in grad school that once you truly develop a sociological
imagination, you can never "go bacK".  That's where I'd like my students to
be, and to be active participants in using their perspectives to build a
positive future.

Kathy

Kathy Stolley, PhD
Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice
Virginia Wesleyan College
1584 Wesleyan Drive
Norfolk, Va  23502
kstolley@...

hi, Michelle

no, didn't participate in that. i know some of the folks who work there
and have done several trainings for the host agency (Texas Council on
Family Violence), but never assisted them in that one.

i always had difficulty with evaluating our (Family Place) hotline in
terms of outcomes; or at least in terms of the outcomes that our funding
sources wanted. we were expected to demonstrate some kind of measurable
change in the client as a result of her/him using the hotline. i
eventually figured out to ask clients who came to our emergency shelter
about their hotline experience, but overall it was an unsatisfactory
endeavor.

what were some of the things that you inquired about?

john

Lorraine:

I, too, hope you will share your syllabus.  I taught an applied sociology
class for the first time this spring.  The students did an interesting
project (a client consulting type thing) and it turned out well, but what
the course really needs is to find a better way to integrate
service-learning.  That's the vision for the course and the department.

Thanks,
Kathy

Kathy Stolley, Ph.D.
Dept. of Sociology/Criminal Justice
Virginia Wesleyan College
1584 Wesleyan Drive
Norfolk, Va  23502


>From: Andi Stepnick <stepnicka@...>
>Reply-To: applyingsociology@yahoogroups.com
>To: applyingsociology@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: Re: [applyingsociology] Another applying sociology Introduction
>Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 10:22:19 -0500
>
>Lorraine,
>
>I wonder if you'd be willing to share your syllabus and thoughts on Service
>Learning.  I have felt a strong call to do this type of work and have
>ordered the ASA teaching guide.  That said, I'd love to hear tips,
>pitfalls, etc...if/when you have the time.
>
>I'm sure others on the list would like to hear them, too.
>
>Best,
>
>Andi
>
>
>lprinsky wrote:
>
>>Greetings all,
>>
>>I am Lorraine Prinsky, Professor of Sociology at California State
>>University, Fullerton.  I have been involved in the service learning
>>movement here in California and on my campus.  I developed and teach
>>a course called "Applying Sociology in the Community" which is an
>>urban studies course with a strong service learning component.  My
>>department had a service learning requirement for all majors that is
>>currently suspended while we consider alternative methods of
>>implementing such a requirement.
>>
>>My interest in the subject is primarily practical--teaching
>>undergraduate students to apply sociology while also working and
>>contributing to the community.  I am also interested in the
>>theoretical discussions as well.
>>
>>Lorraine
>>
>>*****************************************************
>>Lorraine Prinsky, Ph.D.
>>Professor of Sociology
>>California State University, Fullerton
>>Phone:  (714)278-3252
>>Fax: (714)278-2001
>>*****************************************************
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
>>
>>     *  Visit your group "applyingsociology
>>       <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/applyingsociology>" on the web.
>>            *  To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>>        applyingsociology-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>>
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>>       Service <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>.
>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>
>
>--
>
>
>
>Andi
>
>
>
>
>
>Every object, every being,
>
>Is a jar of delight.
>
>Be a connoisseur.
>
>     ~Rumi~
>
>
>
>Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into
>
>something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It's in our hands.
>
>     ~Cathy Better~
>
>
>
>Things which matter most should never be at the mercy of things which
>matter
>
>least.
>
>      ~Johann von Goethe~
>
>
>
>----------------
>
>Dr. Andi Stepnick
>
>Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology
>
>314 Wheeler Humanities Building
>
>Belmont University
>
>1900 Belmont Blvd.
>
>Nashville TN 37212-3757
>
>
>
>Direct Line:  (615) 460-6249
>
>Office Manager: (615) 460-5505
>
>Sociology Fax:  (615) 460-6997
>
>
>

Bill

the one kind of "public education" that must be overcome:

White House rhetoric runs counter to policy realities, speech experts say

"According to the researchers, whose findings appear in a new book, "Globalization and Empire: The U.S. Invasion of Iraq, Free Markets, and the Twilight of Democracy" (University of Alabama Press), the Bush presidency has built a verbal "operation of deception" characterized by fabrications and lies, disinformation and propaganda, posturing and threats and an arsenal of rhetorical tricks, chief among them what rhetoricians call logical fallacies."

Greetings all,

I am Lorraine Prinsky, Professor of Sociology at California State
University, Fullerton.  I have been involved in the service learning
movement here in California and on my campus.  I developed and teach
a course called "Applying Sociology in the Community" which is an
urban studies course with a strong service learning component.  My
department had a service learning requirement for all majors that is
currently suspended while we consider alternative methods of
implementing such a requirement.

My interest in the subject is primarily practical--teaching
undergraduate students to apply sociology while also working and
contributing to the community.  I am also interested in the
theoretical discussions as well.

Lorraine

*****************************************************
Lorraine Prinsky, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
California State University, Fullerton
Phone:  (714)278-3252
Fax: (714)278-2001
*****************************************************

hi, Michelle

before coming to CCCC, i was the director of program evaluation for a
domestic violence agency in dallas for six years. opened my upper-middle
class, privileged, white-boy eyes (they had already been opened somewhat
by my previous work in the field of substance abuse with felony
probationers).

i am working on getting something together at the college either for
domestic violence awareness month in october or the 16 days of activism
against gender violence in november; trying to apply what i learned and
know to be true.

thought i would share that connection/

john

John E. Glass, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Colin County Community College
Preston Ridge Campus
9700 Wade Boulevard
Frisco, TX 75035
+1-972-377-1622
http://iws.ccccd.edu/jglass/
jglass@...

"We are more concerned about the discovery of knowledge than with its
dissemination"
B. F. Skinner

sorry, here is the rest of the story:

<http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/uoia-whr051506.php>

john

White House rhetoric runs counter to policy realities, speech experts say

Ram

where are you, what kind of work are you looking for?

john

John E. Glass, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Colin County Community College
Preston Ridge Campus
9700 Wade Boulevard
Frisco, TX 75035
+1-972-377-1622
http://iws.ccccd.edu/jglass/
jglass@...

"We are more concerned about the discovery of knowledge than with its
dissemination"
B. F. Skinner

great introductions everyone! Welcome all!  I hope
this list continues to grow and is useful.

gene

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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great introductions everyone! Welcome all!  I hope
this list continues to grow and is useful.

gene

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

hi, Michelle

before coming to CCCC, i was the director of program evaluation for a
domestic violence agency in dallas for six years. opened my upper-middle
class, privileged, white-boy eyes (they had already been opened somewhat
by my previous work in the field of substance abuse with felony
probationers).

i am working on getting something together at the college either for
domestic violence awareness month in october or the 16 days of activism
against gender violence in november; trying to apply what i learned and
know to be true.

thought i would share that connection/

john

John E. Glass, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Colin County Community College
Preston Ridge Campus
9700 Wade Boulevard
Frisco, TX 75035
+1-972-377-1622
http://iws.ccccd.edu/jglass/
jglass@...

"We are more concerned about the discovery of knowledge than with its
dissemination"
B. F. Skinner

hi,

john e glass here (not the REAL john glass for those of you who are
familar with the applied soc-soc practice history) but a younger, more
foul-mouthed model.

i currently teach at Collin County Community College (you can see/read
more about all that on my webpage below).

i think that sociology is stuck in the 19th century, sociologists do
waaaaaay too much navel-gazing (see pleasant sensations claim below),
the sociological imagination is dead (never had a chance), sociology is
dead (it had a chance, but sociologists became too engaged in navel
gazing) we are all conditioned to ignore what is happening in the world
and to other people, we live only for the securing of pleasant
sensations and that Skinner was someone we ignore at our own peril.

yeah, i think that about sums it up.

glad to be on the list.

john

John E. Glass, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Colin County Community College
Preston Ridge Campus
9700 Wade Boulevard
Frisco, TX 75035
+1-972-377-1622
http://iws.ccccd.edu/jglass/
jglass@...

"We are more concerned about the discovery of knowledge than with its
dissemination"
B. F. Skinner

Greetings all,

I am Lorraine Prinsky, Professor of Sociology at California State
University, Fullerton.  I have been involved in the service learning
movement here in California and on my campus.  I developed and teach
a course called "Applying Sociology in the Community" which is an
urban studies course with a strong service learning component.  My
department had a service learning requirement for all majors that is
currently suspended while we consider alternative methods of
implementing such a requirement.

My interest in the subject is primarily practical--teaching
undergraduate students to apply sociology while also working and
contributing to the community.  I am also interested in the
theoretical discussions as well.

Lorraine

*****************************************************
Lorraine Prinsky, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
California State University, Fullerton
Phone:  (714)278-3252
Fax: (714)278-2001
*****************************************************

Hi,
I tried to write up an into and figured that the web page below would be
the best introduction for now.

http://www.delswork.net/thanks.htm


Del

Hi all:

The following was posted on the teaching sociology listserv on May 14.  It
really fits the flavor of this group's opening conversation.

Kathy

Kathy Stolley, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology
Virginia Wesleyan College
Norfolk, VA  23502
kstolley@...

********************

..... an essay on Mills' Power Elite from today's Book Review.  Here's the
link ........
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/books/review/14summers.html?pagewanted=print)\
.

May 14, 2006
Essay
The Deciders
By JOHN H. SUMMERS

"The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in
which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family and neighborhood
they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern."

The opening sentence of "The Power Elite," by C. Wright Mills, seems
unremarkable, even bland. But when the book was first published 50 years ago
last month, it exploded into a culture riddled with existential anxiety and
political fear. Mills — a broad-shouldered, motorcycle-riding anarchist from
Texas who taught sociology at Columbia — argued that the "sociological key"
to American uneasiness could be found not in the mysteries of the
unconscious or in the battle against Communism, but in the over-organization
of society. At the pinnacle of the government, the military and the
corporations, a small group of men made the decisions that reverberated
"into each and every cranny" of American life. "Insofar as national events
are decided," Mills wrote, "the power elite are those who decide them."

His argument met with criticism from all sides. "I look forward to the time
when Mr. Mills hands back his prophet's robes and settles down to being a
sociologist again," Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in The New York Post. Adolf
Berle, writing in the Book Review, said that while the book contained "an
uncomfortable degree of truth," Mills presented "an angry cartoon, not a
serious picture." Liberals could not believe a book about power in America
said so little about the Supreme Court, while conservatives attacked it as
leftist psychopathology ("sociological mumbo jumbo," Time said). The Soviets
translated it in 1959, but decided it was pro-American. "Although Mills
expresses a skeptical and critical attitude toward bourgeois liberalism and
its society of power," said the introduction to the Russian translation,
"his hopes and sympathies undoubtedly remain on its side."

Even so, "The Power Elite" found an eclectic audience at home and abroad.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara debated the book in the mountains of the Sierra
Maestra. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir published excerpts in their
radical journal, Les Temps Modernes. In the United States, Mills received
hundreds of letters from Protestant clergymen, professors and students,
pacificists and soldiers. This note came from an Army private stationed in
San Francisco: "I genuinely appreciate reading in print ideas I have thought
about some time ago. At that time, they seemed to me so different that I
didn't tell anyone." In the aftermath of the global riots of 1968, the
C.I.A. identified Mills as one of the most influential New Left
intellectuals in the world, though he had been dead for six years.

The historical value of "The Power Elite" seems assured. It was the first
book to offer a serious model of power that accounted for the secretive
agencies of national security. Mills saw the postideological "postmodern
epoch" (as he would later call it) at its inception, and his book remains a
founding text in the continuing demand for democratically responsible
political leadership — a demand echoed and amplified across the decades in
books like Christopher Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites" (1995), Kevin
Phillips's "Wealth and Democracy" (2002), Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of
Empire" (2004) and Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas?" (2004).

Much of "The Power Elite" was a tough-talking polemic against the "romantic
pluralism" embedded in the prevailing theory of American politics. The
separation of powers in the Constitution, the story went, repelled the
natural tendency of power to concentrate, while political parties and
voluntary societies organized the clash of interests, laying the people's
representatives open to the influence of public opinion. This "theory of
balance" still applied to the "middle levels of power," Mills wrote. But the
society it envisioned had been eclipsed.

For the first time in history, he argued, the territories of the United
States made up a self-conscious mass society. If the economy had once been a
multitude of locally or regionally rooted, (more or less) equal units of
production, it now answered to the needs of a few hundred corporations. If
the government had once been a patchwork of states held together by
Congress, it now answered to the initiatives of a strong executive. If the
military had once been a militia system resistant to the discipline of
permanent training, it now consumed half the national budget, and seated its
admirals and generals in the biggest office building in the world.

The "awesome means of power" enthroned upon these monopolies of production,
administration and violence included the power to prevent issues and ideas
from reaching Congress in the first place. Most Americans still believed the
ebb and flow of public opinion guided political affairs. "But now we must
recognize this description as a set of images out of a fairy tale," Mills
wrote. "They are not adequate even as an approximate model of how the
American system of power works."

The small groups of men standing at the head of the three monopolies
represented a new kind of elite, whose character and conduct mirrored the
antidemocratic ethos of their institutions. The corporations recruited from
the business schools, and conceived executive training programs that
demanded strict conformity. The military selected generals and admirals from
the service academies, and inculcated "the caste feeling" by segregating
them from the associational life of the country. Less and less did local
apprenticeships serve as a passport to the government's executive chambers.
Of the appointees in the Eisenhower administration, Mills found that a
record number had never stood for election at any level.

Above the apparent balance of powers, Mills said, "an intricate set of
overlapping cliques" shared in "decisions having at least national
consequences." Rather than operating in secret, the same kinds of men — who
traded opinions in the same churches, clubs and schools — took turns in the
same jobs. Mills pointed to the personnel traffic among the Pentagon, the
White House and the corporations. The nation's three top policy positions —
secretary of state, treasury and defense — were occupied by former corporate
executives. The president was a general.

Mills could not answer many of the most important questions he raised. How
did the power elite make its decisions? He did not know. Did its members
cause their roles to be created, or step into roles already created? He
could not say. Around what interests did they cohere? He asserted a
"coincidence of interest" partially organized around "a permanent war
establishment," but he did little more than assert it. Most of the time, he
said, the power elite did not cohere at all. "This instituted elite is
frequently in some tension: it comes together only on certain coinciding
points and only on certain occasions of 'crisis.' " Although he urged his
readers to scrutinize the commanding power of decision, his book did not
scrutinize any decisions.

These ambiguities have kept "The Power Elite" vulnerable to the charge of
conspiracy-mongering. In a recent essay in Playboy called "Who Rules
America?" Arthur Schlesinger Jr. repeated his earlier skepticism about
Mills's argument, calling it "a sophisticated version of the American
nightmare." Alan Wolfe, in a 2000 afterword, pointed out that while Mills
got much about the self-enriching ways of the corporate elite right, his
vision of complacent American capitalism did not anticipate the competitive
dynamics of our global economy. And of late we have seen that "occasions of
crisis" do not necessarily serve to unify the generals with the politicians.

Yet "The Power Elite" abounds with questions that still trouble us today.
Can a strong democracy coexist with the amoral ethos of corporate elites?
And can public argument have democratic meaning in the age of national
security? The trend in foreign affairs, Mills argued, was for a militarized
executive branch to bypass the United Nations, while Congress was left with
little more than the power to express "general confidence, or the lack of
it." Policy tended to be announced as doctrine, which was then sold to the
public via the media. Career diplomats in the State Department believed they
could not truthfully report intelligence. Meanwhile official secrecy
steadily expanded its reach. "For the first time in American history, men in
authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end," Mills
wrote in a sentence that remains as powerful and unsettling as it was 50
years ago. "Such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism
they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own."

John H. Summers teaches intellectual history at Harvard. He is currently
writing a biography of C. Wright Mills.

Hello ALL,
I'm Rebekah, a current graduate student at Cal State Northridge. Unlike Ken, I
have a total of 1 degree (BA in sociology), am currently working on my MA
(sociology), plan on getting my Phd (sociology), and plan to teach at a
community college or Cal State University. My current interests range from
Juvenile Delinquency/Prevention (specific to California) to gender and poverty
(in Mexico) to qualitative research. That's me in a nutshell.
con respeto,
rebekah

I'm not sure whether I introduced myself on this list of not.  But just in case, I'll introduce myself now.

I'm Ken Zimmerman.  I'm a senior analyst with the Oregon Public Utility Commission.  Formerly I was Chief of Energy at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, and prior to that a US House Staffer (Democratic), professor of sociology, psychology, and economics, and consultant to local and state governments on energy issues.  I've been in the energy "game" for over 35 years, and I know where and how many of the bodies were buried.  And as a hobby I love to "raise hell" with the established economic and energy policy and those associated with it.  I hold various degrees, 7 altogether, 5 from Texas universities.  I did leave the state twice for degrees.  My PhD is in sociology but I also have graduate degrees in psychology, economics, mathematics.  My undergraduate work was in history, American literature, mathematics, and Russian area studies.  Strange mix, right?  But I enjoyed the ride.

As to Bill's points, first let me say I look forward to reading the book when its published.  Second, Bill is on target (he's standing on the shoulders of giants and that helps).  I want to add just two points.  First, one of the great insights of Karl Marx is about power.  He pointed out that people seldom perceive the exercise of power because of "false consciousness."  In simple terms false consciousness is viewing certain economic and political conventions as natural and inevitable, thus beyond questioning.  That's our situation today.  The imperial presidency, great wealth by a few at the expense of the vast majority of the population, market economics, the "war on terrorism," inferior health care, imposing democracy through invasion, the choice between authoritarian leadership and conquest by our enemies, etc. are neither natural nor inevitable.  But they are portrayed as such and many accept and live that portrayal.  This is one insight sociologists must take the lead in communicating across the US and around the world. 

Second is another insight of Marx, with help from Engels and Hegel.  It is that capitalism an a social system is inherently not only self destructive but also destructive of the larger culture which is its context.  This is all well and good so long as you don't "give a shit" about the harm (sometimes great harm) the workings of capitalistic machinations have on the poor, the retired, those on fixed incomes, those in low paying jobs, etc. but most importantly on the coherence and stability of cultures around the world and our ability to plan and prepare for the future.  The "blind" workings of capitalism, Economics 101 as the Wall Street Journal calls it, will be our undoing not just economically but culturally.  It will destroy not just itself but the societies and cultures which nurture it.  It is a poison we use with great risk.  Allowed to operate uncontrolled its very tendencies to maximize profits and "grow the company" push out every other goal and motive.  And this eventually means the end of any culture, any society, any "way of life" beyond these goals and motives.  We become the slaves of capitalism at that point; rather than it serving the needs and wants we choose, it chooses our actions and eventually our needs and wants.  And lest you think my remarks grossly exaggerated you need only read Adam Smith.  He gave the same warning, but in much more gentile 18th century language.

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: applyingsociology@yahoogroups.com [mailto:applyingsociology@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 4:31 AM
To: applyingsociology@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [applyingsociology] Digest Number 4

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There are 2 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

   1.  Politics and Sociology   
         From: "William Du Bois" dubois@...
   2.  introducations   
         From: "ge sha" gsocialchange@...

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 1
    From: "William Du Bois" dubois@...
    Date: Sat May 13, 2006 8:03am(PDT)
Subject: Politics and Sociology

As moderator, I really want to not to dominate the conversation (anymore than I normally would on any listserv).  But nobody is talking so here's something I wouldn't mind sharing.

Below is something Dean Wright and I have in a book called "Politics in the Human Interest:
Applying Sociology in the Real World" which is in press.

As we quote earlier, my friend humanistic psychologist Art Warmoth says:  "The conscious design of social systems goes by the name of politics."



Chapter 5:  Public Education

"the political problem par excellence is the problem of education."
Henri Bergson, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1927

If you haven't noticed, public education about how to change the world for the better is called politics.  In our time, we are witnessing a moral failure to educate.  Oh, we do it around the edges.  But the core of the discipline remains sterile.  The crucial problem of our time is that the media has been confiscated by large corporate interests who use it predominately to promote one view.  It has become such that major candidates from both parties are afraid to go outside the agenda defined by this media as mainstream.  How do we then do public education?

Max Weber in 1918 gave two lectures, one on "Science as a Vocation" and one on "Politics as a Vocation."  Comte and Ward would have told him it is a false dichotomy.  In "Politics as a Vocation," Weber discusses the "calling for politics."  When one both sees "ultimate ends"
and "feels such responsibility with heart and soul" a "mature person -- no matter whether old or young in years --·reaches the point where he
says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other.'"

And this is where we are today as a discipline.
Conservatives have pushed the envelope so far we must respond or face the extinction of sociology as an active discipline.

Here we stand.  We can do no other.  Any political agenda tenets of rugged individualism as is currently popularis the antithesis of what Erich Fromm called The Sane Society.  From its tenets flow only social problems.  Having studied sociology, we can say no other.  Our science of human betterment shows the folly of a laissez faire approach focusing only on individuals.  In a time when such approaches dominate the media and liberal politicians do little more than tag along, it is essential that we find ways to teach sociology to the general public.

In an era of globalization, more than ever, we need a conversation about human values.  What is important?  On what shall we build the world?

Public education today is in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, corporate media executives and the Heritage Foundation.
This is how much of America gets its information.
And this is how the public forms interpretations of the day's events.  Unprofessional and irresponsible verbiage in the name of journalism has both taken hold in America as a source of information and at the same time defamed and demeaned the age-old honored traditional of professional journalism.

It is hard to export democracy when you don't understand it.  Democracy is about dialog and responding to others' needs and concerns.  Today, for global capitalists bent on plunder, democracy survives more as a logo than as substance.  But what would true global democracy look like?  And what would democracy mean at home?

Today, democracy survives as just picking your leaders (or a spokesperson funded by powers that be).  Shouldn't we have debates about the central issues of our lives?

How do we want to be governed?  How should people be managed?  Is democracy just a matter of picking a new authoritarian leader?  Do we just get to pick our dictator once every four years?
Or should we choose a whole different way of doing government and managing people?

What kind of society should we make?  and what kind of values should we shape?  What is our image of the world and the good society?  This is the stuff of politics.  Sociology must be about this or it is trivia.


________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 2
    From: "ge sha" gsocialchange@...
    Date: Sat May 13, 2006 9:58am(PDT)
Subject: introducations

can others introduce themselves? Just a few words. You can see the other introductions (from Bill and I) at the web site http://groups.yahoo.com/group/applyingsociology/

if you weren't on the list when we posted.

thanks

gene

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-- 

I'm not sure whether I introduced myself on this list of not.  But just in case,
I'll introduce myself now.

I'm Ken Zimmerman.  I'm a senior analyst with the Oregon Public Utility
Commission.  Formerly I was Chief of Energy at the Oklahoma Corporation
Commission, and prior to that a US House Staffer (Democratic), professor of
sociology, psychology, and economics, and consultant to local and state
governments on energy issues.  I've been in the energy "game" for over 35 years,
and I know where and how many of the bodies were buried.  And as a hobby I love
to "raise hell" with the established economic and energy policy and those
associated with it.  I hold various degrees, 7 altogether, 5 from Texas
universities.  I did leave the state twice for degrees.  My PhD is in sociology
but I also have graduate degrees in psychology, economics, mathematics.  My
undergraduate work was in history, American literature, mathematics, and Russian
area studies.  Strange mix, right?  But I enjoyed the ride.

As to Bill's points, first let me say I look forward to reading the book when
its published.  Second, Bill is on target (he's standing on the shoulders of
giants and that helps).  I want to add just two points.  First, one of the great
insights of Karl Marx is about power.  He pointed out that people seldom
perceive the exercise of power because of "false consciousness."  In simple
terms false consciousness is viewing certain economic and political conventions
as natural and inevitable, thus beyond questioning.  That's our situation today.
The imperial presidency, great wealth by a few at the expense of the vast
majority of the population, market economics, the "war on terrorism," inferior
health care, imposing democracy through invasion, the choice between
authoritarian leadership and conquest by our enemies, etc. are neither natural
nor inevitable.  But they are portrayed as such and many accept and live that
portrayal.  This is one insight sociologists must take the lead in communicating
across the US and around the world.

Second is another insight of Marx, with help from Engels and Hegel.  It is that
capitalism an a social system is inherently not only self destructive but also
destructive of the larger culture which is its context.  This is all well and
good so long as you don't "give a shit" about the harm (sometimes great harm)
the workings of capitalistic machinations have on the poor, the retired, those
on fixed incomes, those in low paying jobs, etc. but most importantly on the
coherence and stability of cultures around the world and our ability to plan and
prepare for the future.  The "blind" workings of capitalism, Economics 101 as
the Wall Street Journal calls it, will be our undoing not just economically but
culturally.  It will destroy not just itself but the societies and cultures
which nurture it.  It is a poison we use with great risk.  Allowed to operate
uncontrolled its very tendencies to maximize profits and "grow the company" push
out every other goal and motive.  And this eventually means the end of any
culture, any society, any "way of life" beyond these goals and motives.  We
become the slaves of capitalism at that point; rather than it serving the needs
and wants we choose, it chooses our actions and eventually our needs and wants. 
And lest you think my remarks grossly exaggerated you need only read Adam Smith.
He gave the same warning, but in much more gentile 18th century language.

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: applyingsociology@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:applyingsociology@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 4:31 AM
To: applyingsociology@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [applyingsociology] Digest Number 4

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There are 2 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

    1.  Politics and Sociology
          From: "William Du Bois" dubois@...
    2.  introducations
          From: "ge sha" gsocialchange@...

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 1
     From: "William Du Bois" dubois@...
     Date: Sat May 13, 2006 8:03am(PDT)
Subject: Politics and Sociology

As moderator, I really want to not to dominate the conversation (anymore than I
normally would on any listserv).  But nobody is talking so here's something I
wouldn't mind sharing.

Below is something Dean Wright and I have in a book called "Politics in the
Human Interest:
Applying Sociology in the Real World" which is in press.

As we quote earlier, my friend humanistic psychologist Art Warmoth says:  "The
conscious design of social systems goes by the name of politics."



Chapter 5:  Public Education

"the political problem par excellence is the problem of education."
Henri Bergson, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1927

If you haven't noticed, public education about how to change the world for the
better is called politics.  In our time, we are witnessing a moral failure to
educate.  Oh, we do it around the edges.  But the core of the discipline remains
sterile.  The crucial problem of our time is that the media has been confiscated
by large corporate interests who use it predominately to promote one view.  It
has become such that major candidates from both parties are afraid to go outside
the agenda defined by this media as mainstream.  How do we then do public
education?

Max Weber in 1918 gave two lectures, one on "Science as a Vocation" and one on
"Politics as a Vocation."  Comte and Ward would have told him it is a false
dichotomy.  In "Politics as a Vocation," Weber discusses the "calling for
politics."  When one both sees "ultimate ends"
and "feels such responsibility with heart and soul" a "mature person -- no
matter whether old or young in years --©reaches the point where he
says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other.'"

And this is where we are today as a discipline.
Conservatives have pushed the envelope so far we must respond or face the
extinction of sociology as an active discipline.

Here we stand.  We can do no other.  Any political agenda tenets of rugged
individualism as is currently popularis the antithesis of what Erich Fromm
called The Sane Society.  From its tenets flow only social problems.  Having
studied sociology, we can say no other.  Our science of human betterment shows
the folly of a laissez faire approach focusing only on individuals.  In a time
when such approaches dominate the media and liberal politicians do little more
than tag along, it is essential that we find ways to teach sociology to the
general public.

In an era of globalization, more than ever, we need a conversation about human
values.  What is important?  On what shall we build the world?

Public education today is in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Fox
News, corporate media executives and the Heritage Foundation.
This is how much of America gets its information.
And this is how the public forms interpretations of the day's events. 
Unprofessional and irresponsible verbiage in the name of journalism has both
taken hold in America as a source of information and at the same time defamed
and demeaned the age-old honored traditional of professional journalism.

It is hard to export democracy when you don't understand it.  Democracy is about
dialog and responding to others' needs and concerns.  Today, for global
capitalists bent on plunder, democracy survives more as a logo than as
substance.  But what would true global democracy look like?  And what would
democracy mean at home?

Today, democracy survives as just picking your leaders (or a spokesperson funded
by powers that be).  Shouldn't we have debates about the central issues of our
lives?

How do we want to be governed?  How should people be managed?  Is democracy just
a matter of picking a new authoritarian leader?  Do we just get to pick our
dictator once every four years?
Or should we choose a whole different way of doing government and managing
people?

What kind of society should we make?  and what kind of values should we shape? 
What is our image of the world and the good society?  This is the stuff of
politics.  Sociology must be about this or it is trivia.


________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message 2
     From: "ge sha" gsocialchange@...
     Date: Sat May 13, 2006 9:58am(PDT)
Subject: introducations

can others introduce themselves? Just a few words. You can see the other
introductions (from Bill and I) at the web site
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/applyingsociology/

if you weren't on the list when we posted.

thanks

gene

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Yahoo! Groups Links




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can others introduce themselves? Just a few words. You
can see the other introductions (from Bill and I) at
the web site
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/applyingsociology/

if you weren't on the list when we posted.

thanks

gene

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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Let the Discussions begin.

We currently have 45 members.   If you decide later that you would
like to receive the digest form where you get at most one message a
day, let me know.


Bill Du Bois

Hope these are useful:

Solution-Centered Sociology
Addressing Problems through Applied Sociology
Authored by:
Stephen F. Steele Anne Arundel Community Colllege
Anne Marie Scarisbrick-Hauser University of Akron
William J. Hauser The Little Tikes Company
http://www.sagepub.com/book.aspx?pid=4432

and on line here
http://www.aacc.edu/socgeo/solutioncentered.cfm

and
applied sociology & sociological practice
questions and answers
http://www.aacc.edu/socgeo/apsoqandahome.cfm


The Commission on Applied and Clinical Sociology
http://www.sociologycommission.org/

Research Committee on Clinical Sociology RC46
http://www.ucm.es/info/isa/rc46.htm

Sociological Practice, Social Change, and Social Problems. By Bonnie
Berry http://www.ou.edu/special/freeinq/practice.htm

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIELD OF CLINICAL SOCIOLOGY
http://digilander.libero.it/cp47/clinica/fritz.htm

Careers in Clinical Sociology
www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/clinsoc_45575v2.pdf


and some other things...
the Center for Applied Sociology
http://cfas.web.arizona.edu/

Professional and applied literature : putting knowledge to use
http://www.lib.washington.edu/uwill/cycle/sociology/applied. htm

*******
Gene Shackman
The Global Social Change Research Project
http://gsociology.icaap.org
Free Resources for Methods in Evaluation and Social Research
http://gsociology.icaap.org/methods
**
Applied Sociologist

Bill wrote
"How do we create the good society and organizations
in which people flourish?"

I'm gene. Most of what I'm interested in is global
social change, as seen here
http://gsociology.icaap.org
especially in our reports. I want to figure out how to
create a good society, how to actually get society to
change. Thus, our reports, first, on where society
came from and the current state. Next will be a report
on how to change.

gene

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This listserv was only born Sunday night and already has 35 members.

It's really an exciting group.

I don't know whether people want to introduce themselves or whether
they want to just let it evolve.   If you want to introduce yourself
that would be nice or if you want to stay in the background, that is
fine.

I'm Bill Du Bois.  I'm an incurable romantic.

I heard Kenneth Boulding say once, "The problem for the social
sciences is simply what is better? and how do we get there?"  I am
beginning to think public education is the key issue of our time --
and that means politics.

How do we create the good society and organizations in which people flourish?

When I first got out of graduate school, I went to consulting with
bars and nightclubs to build a positive social setting that increased
positive interaction and promoted community.  I've always said if you
can't design a good bar, you shouldn't be allowed to fool around with
the rest of society.

I have consulted with all sorts of groups and people on various
issues.  I am beginning to think the key to the sociological
imagination is studying the needs of people in a given situation and
then asking, what social resources would be helpful to people in
similar situations?  I think sociology should be about inventing.


Bill

Hi all

Would there be any value in setting up an independent
web site about applying sociology? With stuff that
doesn't seem to get onto the aacs site, like
definitions of applied sociology, links to sites about
applied sociology, anything else of interest?

Or would it be better to suggest that all this stuff
go on the aacs web site?

thanks

gene

Gene Shackman
The Global Social Change Research Project
http://gsociology.icaap.org
--
Applied Sociologist

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