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Ambition, vocation, and sociology
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Imber, Jonathan B. |
| Copyright Year | 2005 |
| Abstract | Offering advice to graduate students in sociology about their career prospects is an uncertain venture. I come to the question of how to give advice with the status of an outsider. I have taught nearly my entire career in undergraduate settings, the most recent one for the past 25 years. Most of my advice has been to students considering applying to graduate school in sociology. From this vantage, I send them off and then only see them again when their cohort reaches the stage of applying for jobs at colleges such as my own. The "missing" period of my observations about their socialization requires that I speculate least about it. But I can say with what I think is some certainty, that the probation period of assistant professor is, in many ways, the more obvious moment of truth for many young sociologists than what they choose to do in graduate school. My impression is that between the graduate career and the time before tenure, many sociolo gists find their groove; most stay in it, some abandon it, and a few make it out of their professional trenches into the larger battles of ideas in a world where the usual qualities of human nature are in full force. I start with the basic proposition that well-crafted research, whether qualitative or quantitative, requires translation for audiences beyond those directly familiar with spe cific theories and methodologies. Having edited three journals during the past 15 years and having worked with hundreds of contributors over that same time, I can confidently report that the truest measure of what is important in social science is always a mix of professional accomplishment and broader public recognition and acknowledgment. But let me be as candid as I can about this mix: for some of us achievement within a profes sion with little notice beyond it is necessary and also sufficient; for others personal ambition demands greater recognition than a profession alone can provide. The narcis sism of small differences that often painfully defines the relations among colleagues in the various small ponds in which they find themselves has to be balanced against the much larger pond of the marketplace, where vanity is rarely absent in the sound-byte world of public notice and attention. Academics with large egos are similar to those thousands of kids on basketball courts across the country, all of whom dream of drib bling their way to the NBA. It would appear that an excess of academic vanity could be Jonathan B. Imber is Class of 1949 Professor in Ethics and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College where he has taught for 25 years. He has been Editor-in-Chief of Society since 1998 and is author most recently of the forthcoming Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine as well as Close Calls: Essays on Vocation. |
| Starting Page | 76 |
| Ending Page | 85 |
| Page Count | 10 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1007/s12108-005-1006-0 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://academics.wellesley.edu/Sociology/jimber/pdf/Ambition,%20Vocation,%20and%20Sociology%20AS%2036-2%20June%202005.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-005-1006-0 |
| Volume Number | 36 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
