Everyone is Obsessed with Atheists

Friend posted this link to a Chronicle of HE article about a study of atheists.

Author of blog post Tom Bartlett headlines his review with this headline:

“Do Atheists Really Believe in God?”

My response:
“Do Psychologists Really Believe in Skin Test?”

Meh. I think author’s question about whether any imagined external force, God, Squirrel, Bad Luck makes one “anxious’ is the right one. id they bother trying to figure out if one is an atheist, what they think the statement “I dare God to kill my children” means?

Like, right now, I am thinking about this, I am aetheist, and I am thinking “what a shitty thing to happen” and I am aware that there is some external mechanism or cause of the badness. I mean, if God does something bad, it is usually through an agent- a flood, a burning topiary, or a bearded guy. It is not like he shows up like Zeus and bangs some chick for no reason.

So, really, maybe the statement reminds us of how there are unknowns out there and it is frightening to think about them. So belief in God is really a fear of the unknown. And so the title could have been “Belief in God is fear of the unknown.”

So, interesting study. But like 99.9% of social science, what to make of it depends on interpretation.

Related articles

• Atheist Myths (tolerantatheist.wordpress.com)
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• Kansas City Atheists Kicked Out of St. Patrick’s Day Parade out of ‘Respect for… St. Patrick’ (patheos.com)
• Atheist church’s faithless flock proves value of religion (thepunch.com.au)
• Why Atheists Should Embrace America’s ‘Godless’ Constitution (americanhumanist.org)

Use Google Scholar to do Cited Reference Search within Topics

Ok, so I was hunting for a journal target for a working paper.

I needed to find possible outlets beyond obvious A-levels.

Thought I would take a key reference and see who had cited it and then hunt THAT set of cites for possible journal outlets.

Web of Knowledge has some awesome cited reference search tools, but ONLY for articles.

So, back to google scholar.  Found the reference, a chapter from 2001 in Social Capital: Theory and Research (that’s a sexy title).

Clicked on the “cited 568″ link.

Now, I have a list of those 568.  I don’t want social capital and health, for example, so next I nee to search WITHIN these for results.

First, check the “search within citations” check box at the top of page.

Then click down arrow in search box.

Next, you get all your choices.

Make sure you use OR in caps for multiple selections.  Also, you can use truncated terms like “manang*”.

Voila!  From 568 to 46.

Success.

 

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Organizing Literature for Writing Reviews and Theory

I feel like I need one stop shopping for my institutional theory, fields, emergence, and logics chapter.

How do other people do this?

Traditionally, I suppose I would have taken reading notes or annotations on each item.  Then a draft would be written using quotations from those sources.

Now I have notes and annotations scattered across many sources.  There are

• Reading notes by item
• Synthetic notes where I assemble quotes and my thoughts from multiple sources around a common theme.
• Digital annotations and underlining in pdfs of articles and books.
• Hard copy annotations in books (and maybe a few articles that are older)
• Lists of possible resources

I am feeling stymied by how best to proceed.  As this is a topic I will come back to, I am interested not just in finishing this draft, but also in having a tool or resource.  I can keep adding to for future writing.  A secondary benefit is using it for teaching or for collaborating.

Options:

1. Just write, no resource.  Here I would continue to edit the draft as is and add literature as I need to based on the need in the draft and relying on memory or searching the PC for items.  I could also go through known good sources systematically and leave a few quotes around paper as needed.

Pros: Seems most direct.  No worries about other tools.

Cons: each search may lead me down rabbit holes.  Relying on memory or other ways to access lit may bias me in a direction.  Has been aggravating in the past.

2. Use Excel.  I would make a spreadsheet with all the resources.  They are ranked by essentiality.  I could add some rough summaries of some resources I have.  I can then add fields as necessary.  One issue is what to do with quotes.  If I put them in a field, or in new columns, each record could get really LONG (down the screen) or WIDE (across).  A variation is to add a hyperlink to a file of good quotes from each one.

Pros: Easy to add and manipulate records.

Cons:  Not easy to get material from spreadsheet into a paper.  If the spreadsheet is very big, cumbersome to find things.  If I use hyperlinks, I still have to hunt in that file for quotes.

3. Use Word.  Like Excel.  I would use Word and have it as a table.  Easier to edit text in Word.  Still not sure what to do with quotations.  If I try to go “wide” as in extra columns for quotations, then it can get very wide quickly.  Like Excel, not sure how to organize quotations anyway.

Pros: Better word editing than excel.

Cons: Table may have upper limit of rows and columns

4. Use Nvivo.  Nvivo can code in PDFs AND in word documents.  So, if one starts from scratch, one can build many possible searchable nodes into a library of documents.  This is very good for supporting multiple projects with same or similar literature.  It also has analytical features, like searching for words and using that as the basis for coding.  It can output what is collected.  It can also support theory building through queries.

Pros: Building multi-use, multi-project tool.  Searching PDFs AND documents.  Search and query functions for theory building. With reports, can extract the references with their quotes.

Cons: can not edit tables/databases in Nvivo.  Time intensive right now.

5. Use a wiki-like tool such as google sites.  I have already done this some in compiling some synthetic notes about Institutional theory or operating definitions for this project.

Pros: With hyperlinks, somewhat easier to get from one topic to another.

Cons: Would have to cut and paste all content.  No obvious way to include pdfs.

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How To Do Literature Review (Nvivo or not? Wiki-ly or not?)

In the process of tacklign a fun but gnarly research and theory question for a draft, i started to think about how to use past knowledge and tools to do better research.  One issue for me is that I at times internalize what I read, forget the source or notes I took, and then when I shift from drafting to revising and I want more literature on hand, I have to recreate what I did or start a frsustrating search through my files.

 

Here is the problem and solutions.

Research Thoughts…

Ok, here is a research and writing process question.

I am at the point in a draft when I need to tackle two big questions based on readings in literature.

1)    What have institutional theorists said about new fields?  Specifically, are they characterized by uncertainty, flux, or turbulence?

2)    What has been said about how institutional logics affect new fields.

I have a wide set of resources on this.

A)   Books or articles I have read and extracted quotes from.

B)   Articles in PDF format I have read and/or annotated but NOT pulled quotations from.

C)   Unread articles or books that I know from searches are directly relevant to these questions.

How should I proceed?

Three options:

1)    Quick fix.  Make a new word file.  Paste in all relevant quotes from existing notes.  Add nw notes from read or unread until satisfied with answer.

2)    Fix that involves creating new knowledge infrastructure I will use from here on.  I learned how to use Nvivo, a qual data analysis tool.  I realized that everything it does to store, sort, annotate, and index qual data is THE SAME process as one uses for theory.  Why not tackle this problem using that.  Then I would have a single source this and future research projects.  Downside: maybe some learning curve to implement.

3)    Fix that involves making the single document in #1, but using a web-based tool, like google docs, so that my collaborators can see and contribute.  Note, this can also be done AFTER #2 is done as Nvivo can produce reports of relevant material.

Getting Ready for “Ten Books that Influenced Me”

I had some money to spend.  A co-author mentioned Neil Fligstein’s new book, A Theory of Fields. So, I decided to get that book.  Then, I started looking at my wishlist and my recommendations.  I a few more items popped up.  Then, I wondered, “Well, what have been some influential books in social science or social theory recently?”

This led a google search, of course.  First stop, the ASA’s theory division.  They have a page of award winners.  Not very impressive.  While many great sociology or org theory blogs are out there, the official organs of professional associations (speaking of my experience with EGOS, AOM, ASA, and INSNA) have lagged, although EGOS and INSNA do better.  The ASA theory division award pages has many holes in it!  For example, it does not  the 2010 best article.  Was one not awarded?  The 2009 winner article is not hyperlinked.

But, there is good news!  Apparently, among blogging social scientists, there is a viral type of post: “My top 10 most influential books…”  I found several examples and I look forward to crafting my own.

Here is my list of others’ posts.

Ten Influential Books
http://asociologist.com/2010/03/21/ten-influential-books/

Ten Influential Books
http://crookedtimber.org/2010/03/20/ten-influential-books/

Books which have influenced me most
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/03/books-which-have-influenced-me-most.html

Ten most influential books
http://jacobtlevy.blogspot.com/2010/03/ten-most-influential-books-see-tyler.html

Influential (Actually Published, Actually Read Cover-to-Cover During College or Graduate School) Books

http://inmedias.blogspot.com/2010/03/influential-actually-published-actually.html

My Top 10 Most Influential Books:

Finally, in assembling this, I found a book I had not heard of, Required Reading: Sociology’s Most Important Books.  It is from 1998, so it will not have any great books of last ten years.    Still, I am curious to see what it says (and which I have read or not!)

I know my own initial list of books I have read and which  find my mind turning to again and again include:

• The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism
• Castells’ The Information Age Triology
• Berger and Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality
• Geertz’ Interpretation of Culture
• Watts’ Six Degrees

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Third Nugget from Clockwork Muse- Mountains and Stairs

Nugget #3…
Now Eviatar shifts to chunking tasks.  He calls this, quite nicely, “a mountain with stairs.”

Two points resonated for me.  First, about outlines, he suggests only outlining or changing outlines _between_ final drafts.  This may be part of my problem with “code rules” as it has been restructured five times, at least I think. Not all of these were after a final draft was done.

Second, he advocates writing and then revising in stages.  This more useful for my students than for me, perhaps, as I am already a committed reviser.  They still think, most of them, that writing is getting your ideas on paper instead of realizing that writing is another form of thinking.  They think it is a mistake to rewrite, instead of normal.

Now, to complicate matters, the idea of the mountain with steps is appealing; common-sensical too.  Break down the seemingly distant and difficult task into smaller, feasible steps.  I have climbed mountains.  I absorbed *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*.  I have told hiking groups I led that to climb a mountain you have to have the disposition of a cow.  The difference is that in those cases, I usually know which way is _up_.  In writing, I find myself wondering if these steps are really the right steps to take.  I especially wonder if I am going up at a good rate, or, even worse, going down.  Efficiency and failure trouble me more directly than self-doubt that I will finish.  In mountain terms- I worry now about going sideways or downhill more than about whether I will ever get to the top.

Second Nugget from Clockwork Muse- Priorities and Constraints

*Nugget 2*

In next chapter,  Eviatar (he could be a Tolkein Elf) discusses scheduling.  This is one of those topics that always seemed self-evident to me even as i struggle to do it. Kind of like pedagogy.  But with age comes humility and I have been more willing to work on the self-evident instead of assuming it is self-materializes due to its obviousness.

The schedule is a reflection of priorities overall, and Eviatar states that your writing priority has to “fit” with your other priorities.  He acknowledges there are external constraints.  But on p 17 he writes: “Nevertheless, we usually have much more control over our time than we are willing to admit to ourselves, and if you are seriously committed to giver your writing a high priority on your schedule you can normally manage to somehow find the time to write even under extremely difficult conditions…”

In general I agree with him.  However, more than creating a schedule, the challenge for me is managing the priorities.  This is a bit like the other topic on “how to say no.”  Is working with my daughter’s need for more exercise an external constraint or a priority?  Is choosing to have equitable gender roles with my working spouse a constraint or a priority?  Is feeling compelled to teach in a very labor intensive way a constraint or a priority?

Ultimately, those goals or aspirations which compete for high priority with writing are facets of my identity.  So, asking me to prioritize is also asking me to rearrange my internalized identity.

Kill this Neologism Now- “Majority-Minority.”

Put this on FB this morning.

Heard news peeps, based on recent census, describing how the US will become a “majority-minority” nation by 2020 or so.  Can we kill that phrase now?  If no single group is more than 50%, it is called pluralism folks.  Or, multiculturalism.  Or anything but majority-minority.

 

Among various problems. it perpetuates some idea that white majority is the natural or desired state of the USA.  Look, when the “white” population falls below 50% it is just not the majority.  OK?  Deal with it.  The term sounds like whities get together at my house on Wednesday while the blacks, browns, yellows, reds, and all other hues get together at Denzel Washington’s.  It is just not that bipolar anymore.  I’m not saying some sort of utopia of “i’d like to sing the world a song” will happen, just that identity, justice, controversy, politics, love and marriage, and schooling will be full of problems and promises in new ways.

Natural Capitalism

I am just now picking up Lovins, Hawken,and Lovins Natural Capitalism book.

I am wondering if I could use it in a module on alternative perspectives on capitalism module. I also was wondering what has happened since it was published in 1999.

There is a is a website called natcap.org.

Here I found a more recent edition with a new introduction. http://www.naturaledgeproject.net/NatCap2005.aspx.

What I like best about it is the focus on solutions. I feel like that would mitigate people who dismiss change as naive idealism.

Finding Journals

For awhile, I have been trying to assemble a list of journal outlets for myself.

If we think back to what journals we follow, I think many might have a similar story to mine.  I recall as an undergrad and in grad school in sociology and management, I would hold in high esteem what professors gave me.  I quickly learned to “read backwards”: to take a new article and glance at the citations (or to look at the intro and lit review) and start taking mental notes of which articles and authors seemed most central.  From this, I had a preliminary list of journals that seemed important.

And those handful of journals I tended to follow more carefully since I already had a toehold in their conversations and streams of discourse.

Meanwhile, keyword searches in article databases exposed me to reading lots of abstracts.  Quickly, I started making snap decisions about journals worth paying attention to and which not.

Since then (1990s), I have the feeling that the number and volume of published material has increased.  Overwhelmed is an understatement.  This is compounded by my own multi-disciplinary interests in networks, social theory, and organization theory.

Finally, I have realized that some of my own writing, if it is ever to see the light of published day, due to approaches or ideas that are out of the mainstream, will need to find journals that will take risks, are in the interstices of academic fields, that consort with subaltern, or embrace eclecticism.

How does one find new journals?  That is the immediate problem.  This morning I tackled this as I wondered who might look at approaches to innovation that are more unconventional.  This often means abandoning the fool’s errand of a quest for the holy grail of The One True Formula for Success™.  I was kind of hoping that maybe I would find the Amazon equivalent of list mania.  You know, you find some new book and you see that other users have made this lovley lists like “Best mashups of Harry Potter and Literary Theory” or “Teen Vampire Stories that Don’t Suck” or “How to make social media work for you.”  I guess I wanted “Journals that Think You, _____________ (insert name), Are Brillant.”

The good orgheads at orgtheory.net tried to make a crowd source list, but it seems to have run aground.

Loet Leysdorf does lots of work of co-citation data to make centrality measures of journals, like this one.

A colleague once gave me  this list that is pretty comprehensive: the Harzing list. I like it since it includes several different quality metrics.

There are lots of outfits that provide various lists and analyses of journals.

But I am looking for a little more editorial content.  Shorter lists that are more targeted and not hide-bound to overly rigid disciplinary boundaries.  More opinion.  More oomph.

Why don’t they seem to exist?  I say this based on two dangerously self-referential observations. 1) I don’t already know about them. 2) 20 minutes of basic web searching failed to turn anything up.  Sociology of Knowledge by the inmates is probably a bad idea, but I can’t help myself.  Maybe they don’t exist because opinion and oomph are not rational career strategies?

For example:

Where can I submit theory articles?

Where can I submit articles on innovation that are interested in inter-disciplinarity?

Mixed method articles?

I’ll start making my own here.

Meanwhile, feel free to post ideas or suggestions below.  Thanks.