PSU Magazine Spring 2004

Search the Web for jokes on sociologists, and I can assure you, you'll only come up with three. And in two of those jokes you could replace "sociologist" with any other profession. In the following article, Michael Toth, PSU professor of sociology, laments the dearth of jokes about his field. But that absence, writes Toth, tells us something about the public's view of this discipline, and it's not that sociologists don't have a sense of humor. What it does say is that sociology's particular way of studying human behavior is not widely understood. Criminology, social work, and gerontology-all outgrowths of sociology-are disci– plines that people can readily comprehend, and while jokes about them don't exactly abound, there are surely more than three. But give sociology a chance and you might come to find, as Toth says, that it offers "insights into our own lives and the situations in which we live them." A person who appreciates both wit and irony, Toth teaches to these insights on a daily basis and offers us a glimpse of them here. -Kathryn Kirkland, editor I did my graduate work at both the University of Utah and Columbia Uni– versity with a sociologist with the grand Irish name of Thomas Francis O'Dea. While teaching in Salt Lake City, Tom often exercised at a downtown gym. One day after a noon workout he was accosted by a somewhat belligerent local businessman who wanted an explanalion of exactly what Tom was up to "up there" at the university "Are you teaching some kind of socialism?" the man demanded to know. "What is this sociology stuff, anyway?" Tom was more than a bit feisty; he came from a working-class background and, after serving in World War 11, had taken just 12 years to go from Harvard freshman to full professor-an achieve– ment that ordinarily would have taken at least 20. He also was not one to suffer fools lightly And so he replied, "I draw a full year's salary to answer that question." I recall this story for two reasons. One is that even now, nearly half a cen– tury later, an understanding of sociol– ogy is still not well-established , much less embedded, in the American popu– lar consciousness. As sociologist Peter Berger has pointed out, occupational humor-even if derisive-only works against the background of some mini– mal level of public awareness. So, how many jokes have you heard about sociologists lately) The other reason is that, like the businessman, many people still confuse sociologists with social workers and socialists, two groups whose activities are often already mixed up in peoples minds. And while l rue this confusion along with sociologys absence from popular consciousness, there is a valid explanation for both. That explanation lies in the difficulty of appreciating what the late C. Wright Mills so aptly called the "sociological imagination ." My own experience over four decades of teaching is that even those students who major in sociology often require several years of graduate study to fully grasp its perspective. The early 20th-century American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley opens the door to this perspective in two succinct sentences: An individual is an abstraction unknown to experience, and so likewise is society when regarded as something apart from individ– uals .. . "Society" and "individu– als" do not denote separable phenomena, but are simply collective and distributive aspects of the same thing . .. Cooley's statement is an excellent place to begin articulating the unique Think you are a rugged individual? Think again. By Michael Toth © ILLUSTRATION NATALIE RACIOPPA I GETTYIMAGES SPRING 2004 PSU MAGAZINE 7