Second-Hand Worlds

This will come in handy for several of you as you move into your second assignment: a tutorial on how to answer research questions using GSS data -- with a cameo by Columbia's own Andrew Gelman.

You might skip to the 1:12 mark.

The strength of weak ties, animated edition. From Dalton Conley.

Container - When something is seen as having boundaries that can hold something else (example: "The ship is coming into view." "I'm out of shape.")

Frey Johnston. "Suicide Watch." The Times Literary Supplement, Jan 16, 2013.

Douglas, Mary. 2002. Purity and Danger. New York: Routledge. P 152

While This American Life takes a more qualitative tack, embedding its reporters in a Chicago high school where gun violence is a fact of daily life:

Who shot Alexander Hamilton in their famous duel?

Rist, RC. (1970) "Student Social Class and Teacher Expectations: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Ghetto Education." Harvard Educational Review 40:3, 411-451

Richard D. Kahlenberg. "How Much Do You Pay for College?" The Chronicle Review, Feb 11, 2013.

James Baldwin: "Living and Growing in a White World." Recorded by KQED at Castlemont High School, Oakland, CA, broadcast June 23, 1963.

Thorne, B., & Luria, Z. (1986). Sexuality and gender in children's daily worlds. Social Problems, 33(3), 176-190

My problem with this laser focus on the hard sciences and on medicine is that it pretends that people’s quality of life simply depends on physical phenomena—how fast computers are or how much their knee hurts and so on.   That’s simply not true.  Much of people’s happiness—indeed, including whether they have access to computers or can endure a physical malady—depends on social phenomena.  If I wanted to turn the tables, it wouldn’t be hard to find research in medicine and the “hard” sciences that seems much further removed from people’s daily lives—and their actual happiness living those lives—than is much social science.

The Velvet Underground. "I'll Be Your Mirror." The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967).

Cooley, C. (1902). Human Nature and the Social Order. Charles Scribner's Sons

The filmmaker Werner Herzog returns again and again to this question of what makes us human, and in two films he interrogates the idea from opposing angles that we discussed in lecture: what happens when a child is raised without social interaction with humans ("The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser," based on the true story of a German boy who, in the early 19th century, was raised in complete isolation until he escaped and rejoined society), and what happens when humans try to live in social groups with animals ("Grizzly Man," a documentary cut together from footage shot by Timothy Treadwell, a nature enthusiast who lived among Alaskan grizzlies in the wild until he was attacked and eaten by them). Amazingly, "Kaspar Hauser" is available in full online, below. "Grizzly Man" is streaming on Netflix.