fifteen - ‘I am a sociologist’; but what exactly is a sociologist and how do you become one?

Summary

It was only a little later on in my pathway into and through the Academy that I began to situate myself firmly and with some degree of confidence as a sociologist. It was, and still is to a large extent, a discipline which I do not feel I have the full measure of – not having had a traditional grounding in the subject via my studies. It is also a discipline whose boundaries (as perhaps many other disciplines in the social sciences) feel very fluid. I continue to attempt to find an identity for myself as an academic, and as someone who wishes to contribute to a specific ‘field’, while navigating the complicated, unwritten hierarchies and rules of the Academy (Hey, 2004). At the same time, I am having to find ways to cope with the uncertainty the university sector as a whole is experiencing, with particular universities and certain disciplines experiencing even greater levels of insecurity. Will there be a future for me, and for many others like me who wish to see ourselves as sociologists – as people who seek to understand the social, the operation of power, and the ways institutions shape relations?

I had never heard of ‘sociology’ until it became an option module in my third year at university, where I was studying politics, philosophy and economics (the only truly broadly social science degree available at Oxford). I cannot really articulate what or why – but I enjoyed this module more than any other module on the entire degree course. It was interesting, it was accessible, and I was the only one at my college wanting to do it – so I had one-to-one tuition. It was a very brief engagement with classic social stratification theories on the organisation of social and labour relations and the means of production through a historical review of industrialisation in Europe and North America. It was only eight one-hour sessions, but it shaped what I did next in important ways. I realised that politics and development economics were not my real passion. Rather, it was to understand further how institutions and the organisation of the broader economy shaped social relations.