Culture and Society Workshop at UCSD

A few years ago, the sociology department formed four loosely bounded clusters for the organization of its intellectual life – science, historical/comparative, inequalities and culture. The purpose of this workshop is to be the meeting ground for an intellectual community formed around one fairly loosely defined part of the social science enterprise – “culture.”

“Culture and Society”

In many fields of social science, the very term “culture” is contested terrain, as is, of course, “society.” But, any group needs to say what it is and what it is not, or it cannot function. So, we define ourselves quite broadly, but not so broadly that we have no shared academic discourse. Provisionally – and this will probably work itself out over time – I would say that the purpose of this workshop is to examine work in the symbolic-expressive aspects of social life. Social scientists examine many symbols, such as language, ideas, sounds (e.g. music), pictures, etc. Any grad student or faculty member interested in these aspects of social life will find the workshop a rewarding community to join. Of course, the clusters are meant to have fuzzy boundaries, so I imagine that people who might think of themselves primarily as having a different sociological identity might either want to join this community or visit once and awhile.

The Community

Like any community, part of its success will be a commitment to the larger enterprise on the part of the members. This means that participants need to commit to attending the majority of the meetings, reading the paper for the week and coming up with some helpful critique. And, like a community, the total community is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, a more advanced graduate student presenting a draft of a dissertation proposal might be made aware of some critical piece of literature they are missing. First year graduate students are unlikely to make a presentation, but will learn what makes a good dissertation proposal, making their proposal-writing that much easier. Many of the faculty will attest that these intellectual communities were integral to their intellectual formation when they were in graduate school. Learning how to respectfully critique another person’s work is the first step toward critiquing your own ideas.

Logistics

C This is a “brown-bag” seminar, where people bring their lunch and discuss works in progress. The presentations are of 10 to 30 page texts. Texts are most likely to be papers destined for journal submission, dissertation proposals, grant proposals, chapters from books in process, etc. Sessions start with a mere 10 minutes of oral presentation – under the assumption that everyone has read the text – and then 1 hour, 20 minutes of discussion. Grad students will ask the first two questions, and given a list of potential questioners, we will alternate between grad student and faculty questions.

C In the 2003–2004 year, it is anticipated that the workshop will be approximately 1/3 presentations by graduate students, 1/3 presentations by UCSD faculty and 1/3 presentation by people outside the university. This mix would seem optimal for both making the workshop directly useful to the students, exposing students to the work of the faculty, and bringing in fresh ideas from outside of our community.

C While this is a workshop in the department of sociology, and therefore generally geared toward sociological themes, the sociology department at UCSD is well-known for being open to inter-disciplinary conversation. Therefore we welcome grad students and faculty from cognate departments such as political science, communications, ethnic studies and anthropology who are interested in the topic of culture and society.