>>8023890
>400 level
>600 level

is it some mmo?

>>8023927
https://www.google.com/search?q=400+level+classes&oq=400+level+classes&aqs=chrome.0.0l6.2655j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

i mean forgive me if it's an uncommon system but i don't think it is

>>8023890
I'm not familiar with the burger education system, let alone the texts you read, but Bourdieu is always a safe choice. The Logic of Practice is probably the most influential of his works, and the good thing about Bourdieu is that even people with excess chromosomes should be able to grasp him. Just google for some commentary on him, plagiarize it cleverly, and voilà, you're done.

>>8023890

Do something on Latour and actor-network-theory. Compare it with venerable theories like Hylozoism and Animism. Consider the implications of technological singularity.

>>8024004
>>8024078

i am not a sociology major. the professor knows that i am not a sociology major. he has never mentioned these people in class, and we have never read anything about them. not only this, but any clever plagiarizing would be immediately pointless because she knows i'm not capable of even touching on intelligent commentary, honestly.

maybe it's the other kind of information i need... how should i go about composing a thesis? are there any particular KINDS of questions that are good to ask?

also, if i wasn't told to use citations beyond the one text the essay is about, should I?

>>8023927
Just Americans (They think of University as "leveling up" in intelligence)

>>8024107
>recommend me texts but don't recommend me texts which we haven't read or that the professor might be able to gleam i did not chance upon my self so basically use your psychic powers to tell me which text that is a major work of contemporary sociology that we studied i should monkey see monkey do typewriter ooh ooh ahh ahh im the missing link

are you sure you're not level fucking zero - ie retarded?

Shitposting aside, what's the actual point of sociology? I'm a psychology student and occasionally have to read a few sociology papers, and every time they're full of grandiose, superfluous jargon and, worse, try to make objective claims about society based on the author's biased interpretation of his/her interviews with a very small sample. They always seem to reference 20th century philosophers too - a 'post-Lacanian perspective' on this, or a 'Foucaltian framework to understand' that. The end result is almost always pointless pseudoscience that's incredibly difficult to wade through. This is the extreme end, but check https://twitter.com/real_peerreview for examples.

However, I recognise it may not be a completely pointless field, so can anyone tell me what the point of it is? Any sociology students able to tell me if my belief that the field is permeated with shit is accurate?

>>8024676
all of the problems with psychology are compounded with sociology, as sociology is merely psychology applied to the crowd

that is approximately how permeated the field is with bullshit

>>8024689
I'd argue that psychology applied to the crowd is social psychology, not sociology. Now don't get me wrong - social psychology is also full of bullshit and many of its studies are very low-quality, but at least they attempt to use the scientific method and hypothesis testing. Sociology seems to always use qualitative methods (e.g. interviews, ethnographic fieldwork) to make some biased interpretations about a few people and use it to make claims about society as a whole. The worst thing is the jargon though, I'll never forgive my professors for making me spend hours trying to decipher all the jargon in these papers which essentially made points which were either fairly basic or meaningless once you understood them.

>>8024107
>how should i go about composing a thesis?
Look for interesting connections or "tensions" in the work. Tensions being contradictions or just interesting moments in the text that beg for furtherror analysis. For example, I often look for ways in which the language of the text itself informs or complicates the "meaning" of the text itself. Like, as a very banal example, a text that expounds upon the virtue of reading dense boring books, and is itself written in a dense boring fashion.

>>8024078
>Compare it with venerable theories like Hylozoism and Animism
This anon is on the right track...

>>8024004
Anthropologist here. I love Bourdieu, but how contemporary is he when he died 13 years ago?

>>8024807
Well, he still gets read. Starting with Latour as >>8024078 recommended is not something that's highly appreciated in sociology, at least in my experience. So what's left? Giddens? Sennett? Meh. Maybe Michael Burawoy, at least he's not all empty talk.

>>8024715
As a sociologist, I agree that >90 % of all theoretical works and a large part of the empirical stuff is bullshit or at least incomprehensible without 200 years of study. For several reasons I still dislike experimental psychology more. The only thing I can really appreciate about psychology is psychotherapy.

>>8024724
>I often look for ways in which the language of the text itself informs or complicates the "meaning" of the text itself

Why in the FUCK would you do that? Do you just need a hobby? You sound like the biggest loser on earth.

>>8025810
What do you dislike about experimental psychology? Yes there's a shitload of bad science out there, mainly because of academic culture imo, but the principles behind it are good.

>>8025828
I think that experimental psychology confuses experiments as means of inquiry with experiments as means of demonstration. Plus (at least from what I've seen at my friends' institute here), it's super boring, methodlogically obsessed for no reason, and usually lacking results that are not likely to be artifacts of the experimental setup. Maybe I just fail to see how pressing buttons in a sterile room with a one-way mirror tells us something fundamental about our psyche. But then again, that might only be me.

>>8023890
> sorry for this thread. is there a better place to ask a question like this?

Yeah, it's called office hours you little shit

>>8025797
Fuck if I know. I mostly read anthropologists. We only really read sociologists if they contributed a lot directly to theory or tend to blur the line between sociology and anth.

>>8025841
so you think psychology should turn to field reportage or what

Auguste Comte was the last great sociologist. Departments of sociology should just be closed. They are embarrassing circle jerks that have failed to advance human knowledge one iota.

>taking a graduate level class
>can't name a single major contemporary work in the field
THE. FUCK.

Are you taking the class outside your department? If so, just ask classmates. If not, holy shit.

>>8025866
more pages more stuffs

>>8023890
I didn't realize there were "levels" to what amounts to a meme course of study

>>8025858
not necessarily, I don't even think experiments have a place in psychology. But take, for example, that marshmallow experiment they did with kids where they get one each and can either eat it or get another one if they can wait for the experimenter to come back. It's a very simple experiment that's only able to ask one specific question ("How important is instant gratification to kids?") and will only accept one answer (either "highly" or "not so much"), with implications for their ability to deal with stress and frustration. Now what happens (it's in one of those YT vids) is that one girl eats only ~90 % of the marshmallow, hoping she'll still get another one because technically she didn't eat the whole thing. Desu senpai, that's at least a very clever attempt for a four year old that should tell you more about their cognitive abilities than the initial question. Not only is that kid greedy beyond hope, it can also easily switch from an urgent desire to devour that marshmallow to self-restraint when it reaches the last 10 %.

From what I've see in our local psychology departments (I've proofread two of my friends' final theses and sat through a couple of their classes with them), that's just not a valid result. Whereas Google would pay that kid 10,000 marshmallows for finding a flaw in their experimental setup, you'd have to reject her behavior if you share EP's understanding of a proper experiment.

Now what happens in the actual sciences (and I don't consider sociology one) is quite a different type of experiment. Most experiments there can hardly be considered controlled; most of the time people are just doing shit with their objects and are waiting for something unforeseen to happen.Only when trying to reproduce an unforeseen event in order to check for its objectivity, they will gradually resort to more and more standardized methods (which sometimes don't exist beforehand). I rarely ever see this type of experiment in EP papers, and it doesn't surprise me that the findings are usually of a kind that anyone could have deduced from common sense or at least the initial setup.

>>8027629
>I don't even think experiments have a place in psychology
*don't have a place