Sociology 427 – Course Guide

The specific details of your research, including topic, methodology, and parameters, will be determined by negotiation and agreement between you and the instructor. Dr. Sosteric has written a short summary of his academic interests, which is reprinted below. If you find some common ground, some area of research that you believe might fit with his interests, contact him and see whether he agrees.

Sociology 427 is less about the topic you choose and more about the technical and artistic process of producing a good scholarly paper. However, in order to ensure that I am able to guide you, you will need to confine yourself to topics that I am familiar with and feel competent providing guidance on. Given this, a few words on my special interests are in order.

I am primarily interested in the study of human inequality and social stratification: the unequal distribution of wealth and resources by age, gender, race, ethnicity, language, and religious affiliation. There has been a lot of work done in this area over the years in sociology, especially from a Marxist and critical theory perspective and, consequently, there is a lot of source material available. Fresh looks at inequality are always welcome.

Within the broader area of stratification and inequality, several narrower topic focuses also interest me. These include research on gender inequality, ethnic stratification, class, and colonial oppression, to name a few. More focused research might also include historical analysis of colonialism, the history of structural inequality, and so on.

I am also interested in the topic of work and employment. My interests here are primarily extensions of my basic interest in social stratification and inequality. In the area of work and employment, I am interested in labour process theory, the unequal distribution of rewards at work, mechanisms of compliance (human resource regimes), mechanisms of authority, and the discourses of authority and power in work.

I also have an interest in theories of inequality. Theories of inequality provide explanations for the underlying causes of and mechanisms for various forms of stratification, and they attempt to provide information on what happens behind the scenes to create systems that are so effective at apportioning resources and maintaining various forms of privilege. I am interested specifically in those approaches that draw from Marx and Engels and that carry on in the critical tradition of sociology. Traditions that draw on Foucault and his analysis of the structures of power are also relevant, as are critical turns on Weberian analysis.

I also have a strong interest in information technology and computers, particularly in how these tools can be used either to reinforce or undermine the traditional stratification of gender, class, and ethnicity. The question for me is not whether information technology reinforces or undermines stratifications (it is a complicated set of technologies implicated in both the reproduction and dissolution of social power) but, rather, how to reinforce the subversive elements of technology. There are a lot of initiatives here, ranging from scholars using technology to subvert traditional mechanisms of authority, to the use of the WWW for the subversion of the corporate media conglomerates. As one example of the subversive potential of technology, the WWW is fascinating for its powerful potential to enhance social awareness and subvert traditional structures of authority.

Of course, no interest in stratification would be complete without a discussion of power. Power is everywhere and flows through our lives like the air that we breath. Power is political, social, and psychological. People with power are organized in a hierarchical, pyramidal structure with authority flowing from the top. The higher up in the hierarchy, the greater power and the greater the influence at command. The structures of power can be clearly seen in bureaucratic and military organizations (and many of the larger commercial organizations are mirror images of the military model of power) but the structures of power penetrate all aspects of our daily lives. I am also interested in the application of power. If power is defined as the ability to get someone to do something they do not want to do, then I am interested in what mechanisms support the exercise of power. These mechanisms includes threats, physical coercion, threats of unemployment and homelessness, to subtle attempts to undermine self esteem (and self motivation) and thereby mould individuals into the image of the institution, to gross ideological programming through school, media, science, and church.

I also have a deep interest in developing more spiritually sophisticated theories in sociology. Most theories unilaterally ignore what is, for most people on this planet, an important part of daily existence. The lacuna is striking given that the majority of individuals (with more and more scientists included) hold spiritual beliefs and adopt spiritual practices to one degree or another. It simply makes no sense to disconnect spirituality from scientific research. And here I do not mean researching spirituality as if it is a holdout from a more primitive past or an epiphenomenon of the irrational mind. Here I mean approaching research into spiritual topics as if spirituality and the spirit world were valid, empirical realities as deserving of attention as the “invisible” mechanisms of gravity that have held the scientific imagination for centuries but that have never been empirically observed, except by their effects.

I also have a broad interest in the scholarly communication system (i.e., scholarly journals, monographs). In general I am interested in the political economy of the scholarly communication system and the underlying quality control mechanisms used (e.g., peer review, editorial control). I would call myself a peer review iconoclast and believe that new technologies and new approaches to sculpting quality research will replace the staid and dated (and flawed) peer review system.

This general set of interests covers a lot of practical ground and, no doubt, the interested student will find that several potential avenues of interest present themselves. Still, this is only a small part of the field of expertise offered at Athabasca University. If what you see here does not fit within your general sociological interests, consider either Sociology 425 or Sociology 426 as alternatives. These courses provide the same technical training but are offered by other instructors with different interests. I am sure one or another of these will provide an appropriate venue for the development of your scholarly interests and research skills.