Three organizations I am a part of are now going through the process of “constitutional revisions.” These include the local water association, the Sociology Department, and the California Sociological Association. Actually the water association is not going through revisions, but last night one of the new members actually found a copy of “The Constitution,” and sent an email noting that we no longer follow the rules, mainly because we never get a quorum. …
Month: March 2010
Campbell’s Law, Planned Social Change, Vietnam War Deaths, and Condom Distributions in Refugee Camps
Donald T. Campbell was a psychologist in the heyday of the 1970s. During this time, the belief emerged that society was a social engineering project that could be planned and evaluated. The general idea was that if you collected enough data, you could plan and control social change in a way that led to desired results. Economists from USAID believed this about economic development, military planners in Vietnam believed it, and Sociologists in the War on Poverty believed it. …
Undergraduate Seminar: Doing that 1st fieldwork project for class
At some point as an undergrad, particularly if you are taking a social science class you may be asked to do some kind of field project as an assignment. The kind where you have to go out and talk to live, squishy people… preferably strangers, write down what they say and do some form of perfunctory analysis of it.
Now of course you have some decisions to make as we talked about in other entries on this topic: you’re thinking about the grade you want, how much time it is going to take, and how to fit it in with your hectic schedule of binge drinking and procrastination.…