Career Choices for Sociology Major
Have you ever wondering what career choices are available to you as a sociology student? American Sociology Association has put out information on possible career choices and even a job bank right on the website. No matter you are a undergraduate student or you are working on a masters degree, you can find sound advice on how to prepare yourself for the job market. Take a look, and good luck.
Glad to be your host!
As you know that Adrian Ho has left UH for Canada. Although I’m not happy about his departure, I’m glad that I got this opportunity to work with you, no matter you are students or faculty members! — As your subject librarian, I’m here to help. Please contact me if you have questions regarding finding information related to your research. Also, you are very welcome to post comments here. I’d love to hear from you!
New Sociology Librarian: Irene Ke
Irene Ke will be the new Sociology Librarian at the University of Houston Libraries starting August 1, 2008. If you have any questions about or suggestions for library resources and services, please feel free to contact Irene.
Glass Ceiling among Bloggers
The New York Times reports that there is a glass ceiling even in blogging. From the article (Blogging’s glass ceiling by Kara Jesella):
Blogging has come a long way from its modest beginnings. These days, there is money to be made, fame to be earned and influence to be gained. And though women and men are creating blogs in roughly equal numbers, many women at the [BlogHer] conference were becoming very Katie Couric about their belief that they are not taken as seriously as their male counterparts at, say, Daily Kos, a political blog site. Nor, they said, were they making much money, even though corporations seem to be making money from them.
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Yet, when Techcult, a technology Web site, recently listed its top 100 Web celebrities, only 11 of them were women. Last year, Forbes.com ran a similar list, naming 3 women on its list of 25.
A database that is useful to faculty and students in Gender and Women’s Studies is Studies on Women & Gender Abstracts. It indexes articles that cover various pertinent topics such as education, employment, health, gender role, socialization, psychology, media representation, literary criticism, and historical studies. For other relevant library resources, refer to the database lists for Women’s Studies and Sociology.
Demographic Changes in Cities
The Wall Street Journal has published an article (The end of white flight by Conor Dougherty) that discusses the demographic changes in major American cities:
For much of the 20th century, the proportion of whites shrank in most U.S. cities. In recent years the decline has slowed considerably — and in some significant cases has reversed. Between 2000 and 2006, eight of the 50 largest cities, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, saw the proportion of whites increase, according to Census figures. The previous decade, only three cities saw increases.
The changing racial mix is stirring up quarrels over class and culture. Beloved institutions in traditionally black communities — minority-owned restaurants, book stores — are losing the customers who supported them for decades. As neighborhoods grow more multicultural, conflicts over home prices, taxes and education are opening a new chapter in American race relations.
Part of the demographic shift is simple math: So many whites had abandoned cities over the past half-century, there weren’t as many left to lose. Whites make up 66% of the general U.S. population, but only about 40% of large cities. Sooner or later, the pendulum was bound to swing back, and that appears to be starting.
Did you know that users of the University of Houston Libraries have online access to the content of The Wall Street Journal? Search the Library’s online catalog for the access point and then log in with your password.
City Population Estimates: 2007
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, New Orleans has continued its population increase while Houston leads other cities in terms of numerical population growth. From the press release:
New Orleans, hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was the fastest-growing large city in the nation between July 1, 2006, and July 1, 2007. This follows the city having the largest rate of population loss since 2000.
Houston, another city near the Gulf Coast, led the nation’s cities in numerical increase during the period. New Orleans had the fifth largest numerical growth.
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Three Texas cities made the fastest-growing top 10: McKinney and Denton (near Dallas, ranking third and 10th, respectively) and Killeen (near Austin, ranking sixth). Rounding out the top 10 were North Las Vegas, Nev. (fourth); Cary, N.C. (near Raleigh, ranking fifth); Port St. Lucie, Fla. (on the Atlantic coast, seventh); Gilbert, Ariz. (near Phoenix, eighth); and Clarksville, Tenn. (on the Kentucky border, ninth). (See Table 1. [Excel]).
Houston added 38,932 residents between July 1, 2006, and July 1, 2007, to lead the nation in numerical population increase. Houston, which reached 2.2 million, was joined by three other Texas cities: San Antonio (third), Fort Worth (fourth) and Austin (eighth). North Carolina also contributed multiple cities to the list: Charlotte (ninth) and Raleigh (10th). Rounding out the top 10 were Phoenix (second), New Orleans (fifth), New York (sixth) and Atlanta (seventh). (See Table 2. [Excel]).
Detailed tables of the population estimates and a graphic presentation of the numbers are available online.
Women in Sociology
The American Sociological Association has released a report that studies the career trajectories of female sociologists, Inside Higher Ed reports:
Women in sociology, 10 years after earning their Ph.D.’s, are achieving substantial professional success and high levels of research productivity, but also differ from men in some ways in their career trajectories, according to a new study released by the American Sociological Association.
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Among the key findings:
- Male sociologists in the cohort were more likely than female sociologists to be married or living with a partner (83 percent vs. 68 percent), or to have children living with them (62 percent to 50 percent).
- Among sociologists who are parents, women are much more likely to be divorced (21 percent vs. 1.4 percent). Roberta Spalter-Roth, director of research at the sociology association and one of the report’s authors, said one reason for this was that many more women than men come to graduate school as single parents, having already been married and divorced.
- Many sociologists who do have children do so before their tenure reviews, with the largest group having a first child 3-4 years after earning a doctorate.
Online Videos and Identities
A post on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus Blog (Anthropology professor, now a YouTube star, says Web video can help people craft their identities by Jeffrey R. Young) discusses the social impacts of online videos:
Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, set out to study the culture of YouTube users, and he ended up becoming a video star in the process. He and his students have been lovingly documenting how people are using their Web cams to express themselves, and his short videos about the new ways the Web is connecting people have been viewed millions of times.
But when Mr. Wesch gave a talk at the Library of Congress on Monday, one audience member essentially asked: So what? Why should anyone care about a subculture of homemade video makers, or the fact that some people watch amusing clips on the Internet instead of looking at TV? “I don’t understand how this is going to impact my life,” said the questioner, who said she’s only ever watched one YouTube video.
“It will impact politics – it will impact who gets elected this year,” said Mr. Wesch. “And I think it can be argued that Obama would not have taken the election without social media. Clinton with her machine would have just ran right over him.”
The post has an accompanying video and has generated interesting comments.
Gloomy Boomers
In its report (Baby Boomers: The Gloomiest Generation), Pew Research Center indicates that baby boomers are not optimistic about their social and economic situations:
America’s baby boomers are in a collective funk. Members of the large generation born from 1946 to 1964 are more downbeat about their lives than are adults who are younger or older, according to a new Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends survey.
Not only do boomers give their overall quality of life a lower rating than adults in other generations, they also are more likely to worry that their incomes won’t keep up with inflation — this despite the fact that boomers enjoy the highest incomes of any age group.
More so than those in other generations, boomers believe it is harder to get ahead now than it was 10 years ago. And they are less apt than others to say their standard of living exceeds the one their parents had when their parents were the age they are now.
Two databases would be of interest to those who study the well-being of the elderly: SocINDEX with Full Text and Abstracts in Social Gerontology. For other relevant library resources, refer to the Sociology database list.
World Population to Reach Seven Billion
The U.S. Census Bureau has published a press release about world population and the Bureau’s International Data Base:
World population is projected to reach 7 billion in 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The world population hit 6 billion in 1999.
These figures come from the updated world population estimates and projections released today through the Census Bureau’s International Data Base (IDB). The IDB provides information on population size and growth, age and sex composition, mortality, fertility and net migration. The data are available for 226 countries and other selected geographies.
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The International Data Base offers online users a choice of ways to retrieve demographic data, including:
- Country summary pages showing key population indicators <http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/summaries.html>
- Tables of demographic indicators for countries and regions <http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/tables.html>
- Population pyramids showing age and sex composition <http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/pyramids.html>
