Office Hours - Sociology Podcast

Early in the past Summer a sociology podcast, Office Hours, was recommended to me by one of his makers - see Reported Podcasts Summer 2010. Consequently I have tried two episodes from the backlog and keeping it in my feed readers for the coming updates. Among the social sciences in podcast we mostly see economics and psychology and relatively few sociology so it is good to have this one around. (feed)

When I studied Sociology in the good old days, we had a running joke about sociological research: it somehow tended to narrow down on too specific a subject. We would call it 'Alcoholism in Drenthe' (Drenthe is a small region in The Netherlands) and if that would not put the message through we would add 'Alcoholism among school teachers in Drenthe'. The point being, how much can you learn about alcoholism, about Drenthe or about school teachers if this is the study. And so, with some trepidation I watched the subject list and listened to issue Elizabeth Wissinger on Modeling.

A much more general issue was found when they discussed Studs Terkel and I was surprised and extremely delighted to hear Harvey Pekar on the show. If I recall correctly Studs Terkel was also discussed one day at the BBC program about sociology Thinking Allowed.