Saturday, November 7, 2009

Welcome to Sociology@Mills

One of my favorite things about sociology is that you are always in the lab.  Or as one of my old teachers put it: it's not a discipline, it's a disease.

Whatever your take on that, it's certain that you can't do sociology all by yourself all in your little head.  Sociology is social.  At conferences as well as at university, the best conversations usually take place in the hallways, around lunch tables, or over drinks.  To this we can add this virtual watercooler which, one could easily argue, is what a blog is.  It's an opportunity for members of our community to share their observations, their questions, their internet "finds," whatever as long as it's remotely related to what we are about.

The most important thing about a blog is that it's not meant to be a one-way medium.  While it is certainly permitted to merely "lurk" (that is, only to read, but never write), the thing that makes it worthwhile is seeing contributions from everyone.  That's how we turn it into a "social medium."

What do you think?  Want to join as an author?  Or sign up for email notification?  Or you can add this blog's feed to your facebook account so you'll be notified whenever something new is posted.  Subsequent posts will explain how to do each of these.

Looking forward to sharing this web2.0 experience as well as some interesting conversations. I'll leave it set up to send mail to faculty and majors for a few days and then switch to allow folks to subscribe or sign up as authors as they please.  Thanks for your patience for those few days if this is simply not your cup of tea.

-- Dan

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