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THE BULLETIN |
| of the North Carolina Sociological Association Volume 33, Number 2 April/May 2007 |
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Ken Spenner Recognized for Contributions to Sociology
Ken Spenner, Duke Faculty Member and NCSA Council Member, was awarded the NCSA 2007 Contributions to Sociology Award. This award recognizes excellence in teaching, service, research, or other activity. It is open to members of the NCSA in academic, research, or applied positions. Spenner was recognized for his accomplishments as an award-winning and dedicated teacher, first-rate researcher with dozens of publications in top-ranked journals, and impressive leadership as Director of the Markets and Management Studies Program at Duke. Himes Awards for Best Papers The Awards Committee was pleased to receive numerous quality paper submissions at both the undergraduate and graduate level this year. Michelle Christian, a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Duke University received the Himes Award for outstanding achievement in the graduate student paper competition. Her paper, “The Third Ward is our Home and it’s NOT FOR SALE! New Visions of Community Development and Social Movement Analysis” employs both historical analysis and ethnographic investigation to identify “new variables that highlight how and why social actors mobilize, negotiate, and contest forms of power in different historical periods”. Michelle’s mentor at Duke is Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.
Rebecca Bach (left) presents the Himes Award to Michelle Christian. Nicole Sacco’s paper, “Pharmacists Attitudes Toward the Availability of the Emergency Contraceptive Pill” was awarded the Himes Award for best undergraduate student paper. Nicole found that “religiosity and age play a major role in pharmacists’ attitudes toward the use and dissemination of the emergency contraceptive pill.” Nicole, a senior at Elon University, was mentored by Angela Lewelyn Jones. THE BULLETIN is a publication of the North Carolina Sociological Association. The NCSA is open to any person engaged in teaching or research in sociology, or in a field of applied sociology, as well as to any student whose major interest is sociology. Members receive THE BULLETIN and are invited to attend the annual meeting of the association in late winter or early spring. Dues for one calendar year are $15 (professional) and $5 (student, includes registration for annual meeting). For more information about the NCSA, please visit its main page. Contact Information: The editor of THE BULLETIN is Lee Dodson,
Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Rockingham Community College, P.O. Box 38,
Wentworth, NC 27375-0038 The treasurer of the NCSA is Dr. Cathy Zimmer, The Odum Instutitue, Campus Box , Chapel Hill, NC 27599. Questions about membership should be directed to Dr. Zimmer. Lori Heiger will serve as NCSA recording secretary through the Feb. 2009 meeting. She may be contacted at the Dept. of Social & Behavioral Sciences, Alamance Community College, (336) 506-4400. Click here to return to THE BULLETIN home page.
Check Out the Complete NCSA Website NCSA members and the general public can access the association’s web site at www.ncsociology.org. Information to be included in THE BULLETIN should be sent to its editor at dodsonl@rockinghamcc.edu or mailed to him at RCC, P.O. Box 38, Wentworth, NC 27375. General information for the NCSA web site should be sent to its webmasters, George Conklin (george@nccu.edu, 919-560-6222) or Jammie Price (pricejl@appstate.edu).
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Awards, Video, Sessions, the Beach... Who Could Resist the 2007 NCSA Meeting? Was it the promise of cogent discussion, the lure of the film treatment of Max Weber in Mayberry, the salience of research on North Carolina, or the promise of a beautiful weekend on the beach? For whatever reason, sociologists from across the state gathered at the Shell Island Resort for two days of sessions, entertainment and awards. On Thursday, Feb. 8, President-elect and program chair Steve McNamee hosted a welcome reception at the Fischer Student Center of UNC Wilmington. Those in attendance enjoyed beverages, hors d’oeuvres, the view, and music provided by the husband of former NCSA secretary-treasurer Sue Pauley. On Friday, Feb. 9, sociologists and their students gathered in the spacious meeting rooms of the Shell Island Resort on Wrightsville Beach for a day of sessions, awards, and socializing. NCSA President Miles Simpson welcomed the guests and introduced President-Elect Steve McNamee. McNamee addressed “The Social Construction of Life Meaning” in his presidential address. Concurrent sessions followed on a variety of topics. Max Weber’s visit to America and to Mt. Airy in 1904 was recounted in a video recording by Larry Keeter from Appalachian State University. Keeter discussed the role of students in researching oral history to fulfill a requirement in his theory class. Leslie Hossfeld (UNCW) and Jammie Price (ASU) assembled a panel of students from their respective campuses to discuss the role of public sociology in promoting student scholarship and engagement. The students from UNCW were Danielle Aldrich, Lynn Casper, Casey Simmons and Rachel Stewart. Community sociology student from ASU included Kandace Davis, Beth McClearn, and Emily Smith. Other concurrent sessions focused on North Carolina Sociology. Katherine Jones (ASU) presented an analysis of the social benefits and life satisfaction found by older volunteers in the foster grandparents program. Akbar Aghajanian (Fayetteville State University) examined infant mortality in NC while Gary Gereffi (Duke University) explored the place of North Carolina in the global economy. Another trio of sociologists offer tips on teaching and learning. Ken Wilson (ECU) offered five principles that make good teachers. First, figure out what is working for you and stick with it. Next, teach something important. Different people emphasize what is important differently, he noted. You have to feel it’s important before your students will see it as important. Wilson suggested that teachers try new things, even when they know they won’t work perfectly the first time. Learn from those mistakes and make improvements. Fourth, he urged teachers to tell others about their teaching, especially if they’re having problems. “You’ll enjoy your teaching more if you can talk to other people about it,” he added. Finally, Wilson counseled teachers not to expect immediate feedback from their students. “You do have impacts that you won’t know about until somewhere down the line,” he said.
Ken Wilson (left) and Derek Greenfield offered tips for teaching, learning, and passing on the discipline. Derek Greenfield (St. Augustine College) offered three tips on teaching and learning. Care about students. Students don’t care about you until they know that you care about them. Caring helps students take the emotional risk of learning, he noted. Care about what you do and learn. Good teachers must find what students care about. Care about each other. Students must know each other and care about each other before they can listen to each other. Greenfield went on to offer a number of techniques he has found to be successful including notecard assignments, group exams, photographs, one-minute papers, timed writings, and creating a continuum lineup of students to keep polar extremes from dominating classroom discussion. Al Dunkleman (Cleveland Community College) told sociologists that they are now teaching the “gadget generation,” a group of students who thrive on technology and visual stimulation. He demonstrated a variety of ways to incorporate visual sociology and graphics to “spice up” the meat and potatoes of the discipline. Dunkleman showed how to use graphics in Power Point presentations, how to create a visual montage, and where to find topic cartoons from contemporary artists such as Andy Singer and Ares. He also discussed a technique called “Six Flags on Social Problems” in which different colored flags are used to represent different approaches to understanding and discussing current social problems. Following the Awards Luncheon and Banquet (see separate article for award winners), Miles Simpson officially awarded the presidential gavel to Steve McNamee. Cathy Zimmer announced the results of the election. Ken Land will serve as president-elect and program chair for next year. Vickie Lamb, Robert Puckett, and Akbar Abhajanian will begin three-year terms as members of the Executive Council. At the conclusion of the business meeting, many sociologists headed out for a reviving walk on the beach before returning to afternoon sessions. Afternoon session included a session aimed at students seeking careers and further education. Jammie Price (ASU) chaired the discussion of “Life after Completing an Undergraduate Degree in Sociology.” In another session, panelists Julie Brown (UNCG), Kim Cook (UNCW), Robert Puckett (Cape Fear Community College), and Ken Land (Duke University) discussed strategies for promoting sociology within the academy. Julie Brown noted that there are two issues: how do we get material resources for our departments and how do we get the sociological perspective “out there” in the perception of administrators and the public. The material resources depend on the system you are in, she said and also suggested involvement in interdisciplinary programs as a means of gaining broader recognition for the discipline of sociology. Kim Cook, the chair of the sociology department at UNCW, advocated creating and maintaining credibility as academic leaders. As means of accomplishing this, she suggested maintaining scholarship, innovation in teaching methods, engaging in professional service and in community service. Ken Land stated that the institution must adapt to the environment, the structure of the university, and the structure of the community. Sociologists must also created an appreciation for our discipline as a “big tent” discipline, not just an elective or an option. To do this, sociologists must “sell” themselves both to colleagues and students: Society is so complex, who can live without sociology? Robert Puckett identified four prospects for the disciple: students, colleagues in other disciplines, the administration, and the community. Students may see teachers as “sales representative” for the discipline and must know and believe in the discipline. Colleagues ask what do you have that we don’t have? Administrators ask what do you bring to FTE. Community organizations may need the resources and talents of local sociologists. Steve McNamee commented, “Sociology is uniquely positioned to be the social conscience of the community.” The final session of the day featured posters from a variety of student groups who have tried to apply their knowledge and theories in a broader social context. They eagerly explained what they had done and discovered using a variety of methods and approaches. The last event of the day was a social featuring finger foods and a cash bar. The meeting adjourned at 5 PM. |
The Social Construction of Life Meaning:
Presidential Address
Stephen McNamee
Although meaning-in-life has traditionally been considered the intellectual domain of philosophy, theology, and psychology, in his NCSA Presidential Address, Stephen McNamee suggested that sociology can provide value added insight to this topic. McNamee argued that although individuals uniquely construct a sense of what makes life meaningful to them, they draw upon similar sources to do so and that all of those sources are ultimately social. He suggests that individuals construct meaning in life through a combination of (a) intimate love relations with others as implied in the symbolic interactionist tradition, (b) work and leisure activities as implied in the conflict tradition and, (c) conviction to idea systems as implied in he functionalist tradition. McNamee further suggested that these sources of meaning can be disrupted by traumatic life events such as death of a spouse, getting fired from a job, or experiencing a life-threatening illness or injury. McNamee suggested that such traumatic life events are similar to breaching experiments in ethnomethodology. That is, taken for granted assumptions of reality are disrupted or challenged. In order to "make sense" of their disrupted life worlds, individuals will typically attempt to reconstruct a new set of meanings or reorder existing meaning priorities. McNamee noted that these processes of life meaning construction might be usefully applied to a variety of social circumstances. He provided an example in terms of the study of the life course. People continually construct and reconstruct subjective meanings. While these constructions are ongoing, McNamee suggested that certain stages of the life course may engender both heightened awareness of, and major reassessments to, a person’s sense what gives them meaning in life. McNamee outlined three such junctures or watersheds of meaning reconstruction during the life course--adolescence, mid-life, and of old age. Not everyone experiences meaning crises during these transition periods and the onset of what meaning crises people do experience may vary considerably. However, typical conditions of life experienced during these stages increase the probability of reassessments and redefinitions. McNamee maintained that meaning crises for adolescents and young adults may be related to the combination of importance, urgency, and uncertainty of impending major life decisions such as mate selection and occupational choice. Meaning crises for mid-lifers, on the other hand, may be precipitated not by too much uncertainty as with adolescents but too much certainty brought about by a growing awareness of one’s mortality and an uneasy realization that one’s life course trajectory is largely set. For the elderly, drawing on relationships and activities for life meaning may become increasingly difficult as social circles shrink and physical limitations impose restrictions on work and leisure activities. At this point in their lives, many elderly may particularly turn toward convictions to idea systems such as devotion to religious or political causes as a basis for meaning construction. McNamee concluded by noting that the meaning-in-life is an abstract and elusive concept that is fraught with potential theoretical and methodological difficulties. But it is also a potentially fruitful and largely untapped area of investigation for sociology. Although he still has more questions than answers, like Garrison Keiller’s character Guy Noir, he continues “to try to find the answers to life's persistent questions.” NCSA 2007 Membership Form is available as a PDF document. Viewing this document requires Abode Acrobat Reader.
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