Category: Jonathan Wynn

Bridging Divided Values?

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Jonathan Wynn, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change4 Comments

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

Our national political divide seems to be widening. Our opinions have diverged, and we seem to have developed an ever increasing “us and them” national character. This summer I read four books on the topic, varying in their political and intellectual perspectives.

Sociologists have long been interested in our how our values (moral beliefs) and norms (the rules and expectations by which a group guides the behavior of its members) shape our culture. From Max Weber to Talcott Parsons, we are justifiably curious about how culture bends our beliefs into actions. We have a pretty good sense for how culture serves to push people into groups through accentuating differences. We have less of a handle on how to bring people from different belief systems together.

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Race and Studying Abroad

On By econnellIn Class and Stratification, Globalization, Jonathan Wynn, Race and Ethnicity1 Comment

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

Have you been traveling this summer? If you have, I’m sure that you packed your sociological imagination with you. Last month I participated in a Study Abroad trip with a group of first year students who were all either first-to-college or global majority students. We traveled to the Dominican Republic so the students could do an intensive cultural exchange and service learning course.

These students are part of a program to improve racial and ethnic diversity in our Honors College here at UMass Amherst, and I taught Intro to Sociology with them last fall. Similar to honors programs (as well as high school college prep courses) study abroad programs are, generally, a primarily white experience. Only about 5% of students who study abroad are black. Our International Programs Office recognizes this disparity, and assists and supports the program my students participated in because of this inequity.

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Careers and Side Hustles in Creative Work

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Popular Culture and Consumption, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and MedicineLeave a comment

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

In an article titled “Institutional Office and the Person” one of the great mid-century sociologists, Everett C. Hughes, wrote that a career is “the moving perspective in which the person sees his life as a whole and interprets the meaning of his various attributes, actions, and things which happen to him” and that any self-appraisal was dependent on how that person moves through an organization, as a kind of sequence of roles. What if we don’t really work in institutions anymore?

Careers, particularly in the creative world, don’t match Hughes’ model. People are not moving through any one organization, or even any one career, but several and, at times, concurrently. When you graduate you might not have one career, but two or three. (It is likely, in fact, that the average graduate will have three or four career changes, and four job changes by age 32.) Millennial workers will likely have to work more than one job to make ends meet. You will, quite possibly, have to make ends meet with what are called “boundaryless” jobs and careers.

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Hobbies, Ghost Work, and Identity

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Popular Culture and Consumption, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine2 Comments

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

Work and occupations occupy a dominant position in our lives and, perhaps correspondingly, in our sociological scholarship. For good reason, of course. Work is a central component of our lives. Work fills our days (or nights) and pays the bills.

Work is also a resource for who we are, as what we do is often a central part of our identities. Although you may still be a college student, and if so, you’re probably only working a part time job. (70% of students work while in school and 25% of students work full time.) Eventually, however, you will graduate and have a job doing something. And at some point not too far down the road, you’ll be at a party and someone will ask you: “So, what do you do for a living?” Is it a lazy question, or should our work provide a key insight into who we are?

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Masks and Nods: Distancing and Bids for Acknowledgement

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Statistics and Methods, Theory1 Comment

Jonathan WynnBy Jonathan Wynn

The recent news about Amazon Go stores developing technology that eliminates the need for cashiers has renewed concerns over technology’s ability to not only eliminate working class jobs, but also peel away another layer of interpersonal connection. Small interactions can matter, big time.

Cities and shopping are zones of personal contact, places for micro-level exchanges. It got me thinking a lot about all those small interactions that I enjoy. (My friends tease me over how much I like to make small talk with people and it’s somewhat true. I often try simple nonstandard interactional responses like: “How would you like your coffee?” “Black like my heart.”) I love small micro interactions.

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Mindhunter as Social Research

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Popular Culture and Consumption, Statistics and Methods, Theory5 Comments

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

I recently watched a Netflix show called Mindhunter. The show—based on a non-fiction book—is about the beginnings of a crime division in the FBI that attempts to tackle serial killers.

If you’ve ever taken a sociology class, the first and most obvious thing about the show are the explicit references to our discipline! One of the main characters, Debbie, played by Hannah Gross, is a graduate student in sociology, studying deviance. In the first episode Debbie explains the sociological approach to deviance to her date, a somewhat listless young FBI agent named Holden (played by Jonathan Groff of Hamilton and Glee fame). In a bar she admonishes Holden: “You teach about criminality but you’ve never heard of Labeling Theory?” (Although, granted, Debbie doesn’t get Durkheim right.)

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“So, What are you doing after you Graduate?”

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Popular Culture and Consumption, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Theory7 Comments

By Jonathan Wynn

Perhaps you know what you are going to do after you graduate. As the fall semester starts to wrap up, there might be a nagging voice in the back of your mind that asks, “What are you doing to do after you graduate?” (Or maybe it’s part of family conversations as you get closer to your graduation date!)

Why do people pick the careers they do? Certainly, some people graduate with a good sense of a career. Some people knew what they were going to do from their first year of college. (That was definitely not me.)

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The Problem with Student Course Evaluations

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Sex and Gender, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Statistics and Methods1 Comment

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

It’s the time of year when we start filling out student evaluations. Instructors pass around pencils and leave the room. Some are done online. You might fill out the 1 through 5 quantitative evaluations and write out a few words on the qualitative questions, but don’t know where they go afterward. Where do they go? Do you think about what your instructors think about them? Do you know that they are quite controversial?

I’ll never forget my favorite and least favorite evaluations. My favorite was “Funny like Sesame Street.” (Educational and entertaining!) I don’t think I would be allowed to publish the language in my least favorite evaluation here at Everyday Sociology. Students can get quite inventive with language and, the negative evaluations always stick in our heads more than the positive ones. It’s important to remember that we’re querying students at the most stressful time of the semester: at the end!

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Be Social When you Study!

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine2 Comments

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

It’s midterm time! I wrote a blog post a few years ago about how to take notes and the issues surrounding using laptops in the classroom, but in the spirit of the midterm season, I thought I would share some ideas about how to study.

In some way, I am sure that some of you are thinking, “I’ve gotten this far, so I must be doing something right.” In a way, that’s true. If you are a first-year student, however, the collegiate experience is a different magnitude than what you have experienced before. You will no longer just be consuming information like you may have done in high school. You will now be expected to rehearse and use what you know.

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Football and Foie Gras: How Taste Makes Groups

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Popular Culture and Consumption, Theory1 Comment

WynnBy Jonathan Wynn

Think about how taste works in your life. At some point you have, perhaps quite passionately, argued with a friend about a style or genre of music. Do your tastes define who you are as a person? Your taste in music, your taste clothes, your taste in food?

Taste seems like a very personal thing. It helps you craft your identity, right? It’s who you are. But taste is not a personal matter. It’s a profoundly social one.

What is taste? Let’s say that taste is the trained ability to make judgments on culture.

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