Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World: Introduction

I've been thinking a lot lately about why I love Sociology so much and why the rest of the world does not.

An article in the Huffington Post by Scott Atran called The Folly of Defunding Social Sciences raised some important points. The last sentence caught my eye:

There is more to being a citizen than voting!

The Founding Fathers envisioned a Republic with an enlightened citizenry educated in "all philosophical Experiments that Light into the Nature of Things ... and multiply the Conveniences or Pleasures of Life" -- not just technical training for jobs that pay well.

I have come to believe that it is an "enlightened  citizenry" that our government fears the most. And I've come to believe (or rather, have strong evidence suggesting) that Sociology is a key to enlightenment.

So over the next week I will be posting daily my Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Stay tuned!

Next: Sociology offers a fuller picture of our condition as human beings. (Published March 25, 2013, 6am PDT)

Sociology and the Space Shuttle

As the space shuttle Atlantis launches on its final mission and the last mission of the entire program, I felt it was important to mark the contribution of a sociologist, Dr. Diane Vaughan, then of Boston College, in changing how NASA addressed risk organizationally.


Vaughan's book The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA really didn't get a lot of attention when she first published it. It became a staple in engineering schools but got little attention from NASA.

Then in February 2003, the Columbia went down. Suddenly, Vaughan's work got noticed.

We are proud to be one of the first media outlets to draw attention to her work and the possible relevance to the second accident. I knew Vaughan and her work from attending BC for a semester. We called her the morning the Columbia went down and set up the interview for our radio show First Person Plural.

As the world watches the final shuttle mission, we thought it would be worthwhile to offer that interview again.

Enjoy!

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