This year at the ASA Annual Meeting in Seattle, we asked members to tell us what kind of work they were doing when they were #doingsociology and why. On Twitter, they told us they were doing sociology as an elected council member in their community; as a service coordinator for a nonprofit affordable housing agency; as a researcher working with a complex quantitative dataset; and doing sociology is to create art. Interviews on this topic were also filmed at the Annual Meeting—and several are currently viewable on the ASA homepage (www.asanet.org). while some of the sociologists who responded to our questions were professors, doing sociology is not limited to the academy.
I came to the ASA Executive Office in 2002 as a professional sociologist with a decades-long career of doing sociology. Becoming the ASA Executive Officer was a new way to give back to my discipline by using the wide range of skills I had learned along a career route that was far from mainstream for my generation. What particularly excited me as a sociologist in joining the ASA staff, however, was having 26 other committed members of the Executive Office as partners in “advancing sociology as a scientific discipline and profession serving the public good” and especially in doing sociology on behalf of the discipline itself.
Working on Behalf of the Discipline
The ASA staff “do sociology” in many important and critical ways that apply their myriad skills and singular commitment on behalf of the discipline. The four staff sociologists are not the only ones who do sociology at ASA, although in some areas of our work their particular training is a vital resource. As a learned society and professional association we do sociology by providing scholarly journals and small research grants; supporting programs that advance teaching and learning in the discipline; fostering a diverse and stellar group of future disciplinary leaders through our pre-doctoral minority fellowships; and providing vibrant annual meetings that are unparalleled opportunities to meet fellow sociologists and learn about cutting-edge research in the field.
How We Do Sociology at ASA
We also write research grants, do research and publish in peer-reviewed journals—often providing new insights on the discipline and its members. We use the scholarship of teaching and learning to help sociology departments identify and assess the skills and knowledge in their curricula. We mentor students as they pursue their PhDs. We mentor interns and junior staff as they launch their careers in sociology and related educational fields. We work with faculty and students to pursue and expand career opportunities. We provide resources that support department leaders as they work to build and nurture vibrant centers of sociological instruction and research.
At ASA, we work with individual scholars to draw on our experience of how to bring their science-based knowledge to broader audiences. We bring sociological research to the courts via amicus briefs. We write op-eds and policy statements on behalf of Council. We bridge the gap between the media and sociologist; promoting sociological research and providing a sociological perspective to national and international news and events. We use our research data to advocate for increased federal social science funding, federal support of graduate training in general and under-represented minorities in particular. We bring the experience and understanding of sociological research to federal agency rule-making, such as on the revision of the Common Rule and efforts to respond to climate change. We collaborate with regional and aligned sociological societies to deepen our collaborations in the work of advancing sociology and with higher education associations and other disciplines to advance social science and science generally.
Ongoing Projects
A successful ASA staff grant application to NSF is currently supporting ASA’s archival work to preserve important historical sociology documents by designing and creating an electronic research database. Another ASA research grant is supporting a study of the impact of race and gender on career outcomes of sociology and economics PhDs. Successful strategizing on digital publishing opportunities by staff has successfully launched ASA’s new open-access journal Socius, and the ASA staff’s design of a new approach to the ASA website and its outreach to sections is bringing more visibility to sociological research and sociologists’ many other contributions to the public good. And just in time, ASA Council also recently approved the Task Force on Social Media’s new report, “What Counts: Evaluating Public Communication in Tenure and Promotion,” which encourages the discipline to consider how engagement with the public and policy makers is also “doing sociology.”
What particularly excited me as a sociologist in joining the ASA staff, however, was having 26 other committed members of the Executive Office as partners in “advancing sociology as a scientific discipline and profession serving the public good” and especially in doing sociology on behalf of the discipline itself.
Doing sociology can often be solo work, but as sociologists and other scientists have learned, working in collaboration through a learned society like the ASA can improve, expand and deepen our knowledge, and it can enhance the potential of our knowledge to promote the contributions and use of sociology to society. Thank you for the privilege of being the ASA Executive Officer, allowing me to collaborate with ASA members and staff over the past 14 years, and to work for you and the discipline. As I said in my “Life in Sociology Lecture” in Seattle, in addition to being deeply satisfying, my career of doing sociology has been a lot of fun. As I move into retirement I wish all of you the best as you work together to continue to push the field forward and do sociology in innovative and empowering ways under the leadership of ASA’s outstanding new executive officer, Nancy Kidd.”
