Sociologist. Quantitativist. University of Neuchâtel.
2023 Socio-Economic Review ·
Auer, Daniel, Didier Ruedin, and Eva Van Belle. 2023. ‘No Sign of Increased Ethnic Discrimination during a Crisis: Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic’. Socio-Economic Review. DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwac069
link to publisher: https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwac069
additional material: https://osf.io/ru8y6/
pre-print/authors’ original version: https://osf.io/5jh3k post-print/accepted manuscript: For the project “The COVID generation: Identifying risks and protective factors for young people’s pathways through the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland”, the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS) and the Institute of Sociology at University of Neuchâtel are recruiting:
– A post-doctoral researcher (80-100%) in Lausanne
– A scientific collaborator (50%) in Neuchâtel
Application deadline: 10th of December.
As part of the Horizon Europe project “European Labour Markets Under Pressure – New Knowledge on Pathways to Include Persons in Vulnerable Situations” (PATHS2INCLUDE) they have a vacancy at the Leibniz University Hannover for a postdoctoral position (100%) in the field of labour market and survey research to start on 1 March 2023. The application deadline is on 14th December 2022.
Please find the job offer online on https://www.uni-hannover.de/en/jobs/id/5736?cHash=054bfd1aa3bf337326c10768ad906e43
Daniel Burnier and colleagues have just published a cartoon to introduce sociology as a discipline using a cartoon. The cartoon is available in French.
The cartoon is both a personal account of the main author, and a general introduction to the discipline. Contrary to PhD Comics, this book isn’t about academia, but much more a reflection about what sociology can contribute to the world — the usefulness of the discipline. This introspective focus on what the discipline can do for society more broadly may be something sociologists like doing, but the book doesn’t stop there.
We get an introduction to several (male) key thinkers and many sociological topics like gender roles, social movements, or poverty. I was happy to see the key thinkers banished to the appendix because I’m still struggling with any presentation of a discipline by individuals rather than their thoughts.
Given that the story is told by a male protagonist, I was glad to see an explicit section on female sociologists — but honestly it felt a bit like an afterthought. Perhaps the (personal) storyline made it difficult to do otherwise?
The kind of sociology presented is sociological theory and qualitative research. While this is certainly part of sociology, many of us use experimental and quantitative approaches — and do not struggle that much to see usefulness in what we do (perhaps the occasional reflexivity would do no harm in those quarters…).
Despite these comments, I did enjoy this cartoon and honestly, there’s potential for an English version…
Reading up on decolonizing sociology — and other disciplines of the social sciences — I often come across the objection that it “would not make sense to have an African/Asian (etc.) physics”.
This objection implicitly focuses on human universals, and often is rejected on the grounds that the context is different — arguing for unique interactions between context and human universals. Thinking about this a bit, it struck me that we don’t have to argue for (potentially) unique interactions or different contexts — even if they most probably exist: an African/Asian (etc.) physics actually is not problematic as implied by the objection! Why? Because local physics would identify the same regularities! It might not be efficient to build parallel systems, but in terms of discovery it wouldn’t be as bad as normally implied.
Didier Ruedin 