I would suggest that ‘objective journalism’ has always been something of an overstatement, an aspiration rather than a set of workable practices. Like ‘objective science’, there are – at minimum – choices of what to study and how to study them. Objective journalism has become something of a farce in the 21st century death-by-a-thousand-cuts age …
I know, the combination of these two acronyms and Alinsky will end up making me a target for right-wing nutjobs. I should add ACORN for the fun of it, but I don’t even think that organization exists anymore… With the seemingly impending end of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ (which, incidentally, was conceived of in large …
from their website: AMERICAN EXPRESS ANNOUNCES REENGINEERING PLAN TO GENERATE $800 MILLION COST BENEFIT from the New York Times: American Express to Cut 4,000 Jobs, Saving $175 Million
As an experiment in sociology and blogging, Jenn (from whatisthewhat.wordpress.com) and I have put together a brief video on culture and markets, the beginning of what we hope will be a conversation at the intersection of culture, sociology, and economics. We’ll work on the lighting and switch off the big-head/small-head, but we hope you like …
I don’t think this is totally true, but on the other hand, I don’t think it’s totally not true, either. Bateson apparently spins a nice yarn. But it’s got me thinking about whether this kind of planning is actually as good an idea as it is presented to be. I mean, let’s say that Ma …
Well, maybe not. But I feel like the most interesting and important long-term benefit of ‘doing’ sociology is the ability to look out into the world and see things that others have trouble seeing. That is, it makes the invisible visible. A case in point: a friend of mine has a downright logical state of …
Over at 37 Signals, they have a regular series detailing their design decisions. It is an insightful feature and an insightful blog. Their latest discussion is about how they managed a question on their support forms. I want to drop some research methodology on this problem. While their discussion is about how to design a …
Commensuration, the making comparable of qualitative differences via a common third metric, is valuable for its theoretical contributions to cultural economic sociology. It is a process that makes some things visible and hides others, resulting in an extremely impressive if underrated shaping of the social world. Qualitative distinctions across individual student applicants to college, for …
An anthropologist attempts to explain variation in how investment banks fared in the current credit crisis. Gilian Tett argues that three elements account for it: 1) successful firms have hands-on management (meddlers); 2) successful firms have management who rose through the ranks via trading desks rather than sales or legal; 3) successful firms have a …
In discussion with a colleague about how to strategically manage life in an organization, I was drawn into thinking about how cultural institutionalism would motivate a strategy. Most organizations have pretty positive stories to tell about themselves – if they didn’t, they have organizational commitment issues. My advice is simple: 1) Learn what the story …