“Orin Kerr says”:http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_05-2005_06_11.shtml#1118179393
bq. someone needs to come up with a name for discussions about the blogosphere’s gender/political/racial breakdown. These sorts of questions seem to pop up pretty frequently, and always lead to lots of discussion. Ideas, anyone?
Er, I guess if pushed I “could think of a word”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology. (Maybe this is a VC thing: I remember a while back one of the other conspirators came up with the phrase “Reverse Tinkerbell Effect” to describe self-defeating prophecies or self-undermining beliefs, a phenomenon he seemed to think no-one else had ever noticed.) If you wanted to get legalistic about it (this is the VC, etc) then you might say the request was for a name for the _discussions_ of the blogosphere’s sociology rather than the thing itself. But that would just be the amateur or folk sociology of the blogosphere. This might itself be the subject of study if, for instance, you were interested in explaining the typically depressing structure of discussions about women in blogging, or what have you. Alternatively, maybe Orin is looking for some well-established Usenet folk-concept like “flame war.”
{ 16 comments }
Dan Kervick 06.07.05 at 8:58 pm
I suppose a cute term would be a handy rhetorical tool for dismissing worthwhile discussions with a wave of the hand and a smirk – like “pop psychology” or “political correctness”. Thus I’ll refrain.
P O'Neill 06.07.05 at 10:19 pm
Agreed. Perhaps Kerr could take a word from his buddy James Taranto and refer to such discussions as a kerfuffle.
lakelobos 06.07.05 at 10:38 pm
Let me paraphrase this, nothinh short of, amazing quote: “we have to find a name for something that some people talk about most of the something time.”
Here it is: something
detached observer 06.07.05 at 11:27 pm
So who else had noticed the reverse tinkerbell thing?
bi 06.07.05 at 11:41 pm
Can Orin Kerr spell “de-mo-gra-phics”? Jeez.
I need a term for the obnoxious practice of “raising awareness”.
Eugene Volokh 06.08.05 at 12:45 am
Orin is a pretty smart guy, and I’m pretty sure he’s heard of sociology and demographics. I assume that he thought that both were too broad to be used as names for this particular subtopic.
If you heard someone say “There’s a thread about the sociology of the blogosphere,” would you understand that to mean “There’s a thread discussing the blogosphere’s gender/political/racial breakdown”? I doubt it. If you heard someone say “There’s a thread about the demographics of the blogosphere,” you might suspect that it’s about gender, politics, and race — rather than about the many other things that demographics measures, such as income, profession, age, and more — but it wouldn’t be clear. I would guess that Orin is looking for a term that would make it clear. Neither “sociology” nor “demographics” would qualify, which I take it is why Orin wanted something narrower.
Seth Finkelstein 06.08.05 at 4:14 am
Standard English has no cybercoolness points.
Welcome to the Long Tail of Emergent Democracy BloggerSphere as Wikified Smart Mobs.
But I’m just a Z-lister.
Barry 06.08.05 at 6:07 am
Nah, libertarians and right-wingers just hate sociology. It might lead to Evul Librulizm.
jonathan 06.08.05 at 6:48 am
Mostly Harmless Propagandish Debates
Kieran Healy 06.08.05 at 7:25 am
So who else had noticed the reverse tinkerbell thing?
Robert K. Merton, in a 1948 article called “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.”
Cranky Observer 06.08.05 at 8:34 am
> amateur or folk sociology
I always enjoy the whole “folk” label. What exactly is “folk” anything, and how is it so designated? In this context I assume that “folk” means “any study done by anyone without a PhD”, but since the vast majority of humankind’s study and progress (if you are willing to cause it that) has been done by people without PhDs, how exactly did it acquire the contemptious overtones?
Cranky
Kieran Healy 06.08.05 at 10:03 am
Roughly, I think of amateur soc as connoting the effort to come up with some self-consciously sociological explanation for something, by people who are not sociologists. So that’s usually done by people in other academic fields or by journalists or whatever. Personally, I don’t make strong claims that amateur soc is always bad, though its true (and regrettable) that “amateur” might suggest that, and that efforts to assert the value of some discipline or other are often tied up with policing the boundaries to keep the amateurs out (and down).
Meanwhile, I think of folk sociology as being the kind of informal explaining/theorizing about social life that people do all the time. It’s not intended to be systematic, but it is pervasive. (These days it’s also not insulated from disciplinary work, either: lots of folk explanations are now based on concepts from the social sciences that were once new but got reabsorbed into the culture — like meritocracy, say, or peer group, or social class.) Personally, I wouldn’t attach any contemptuous overtones to it, either, though of course it’s true that a lot of work in the sciences (of all kinds) emerges as a more systematic effort to see whether the folk account is right. And often it’s the results that refute folk explanations that are foundational for disciplinary identities.
Barry 06.08.05 at 3:40 pm
Posted by Eugene Volokh:
“Orin is a pretty smart guy, and I’m pretty sure he’s heard of sociology and demographics. I assume that he thought that both were too broad to be used as names for this particular subtopic.”
Criticisms were probably more about Orin being unwilling to use the words, sociology and demographics. Snarking at what people perceived as ‘too cybercool for school’. At least, that’s what mine was.
“If you heard someone say “There’s a thread about the sociology of the blogosphere,†would you understand that to mean “There’s a thread discussing the blogosphere’s gender/political/racial breakdownâ€? I doubt it.”
I’d expect it to be much more than that, possibly unuseably so, but if there wasn’t that information (or they couldn’t tell you where to find it), then I’d be surprised. And I’d figure that it wasn’t people who are actually interested in sociology or demographics contributing to the thread.
” If you heard someone say “There’s a thread about the demographics of the blogosphere,†you might suspect that it’s about gender, politics, and race—rather than about the many other things that demographics measures, such as income, profession, age, and more—but it wouldn’t be clear.”
Same as for sociology.
“I would guess that Orin is looking for a term that would make it clear. Neither “sociology†nor “demographics†would qualify, which I take it is why Orin wanted something narrower.
I’m not sure that there’s anything in common use which is that absolutely clear and precise, except for the phrase ‘gender/political/racial breakdown of the blogosphere’.
adam j. sontag 06.08.05 at 5:04 pm
I am not a legal mind…but when i read the post, my only understanding was that he wanted a name for discussions of the subject, not a name for the subject. Kind of like there’s blawgs, warblogging, liveblogging, etc…he just wants a verb he can use to say “Smarbleyblogger X posts about the gender/political/racial breakown of the blogosphere.” For intsance, “Smarbleyblogger X cottonpabublargs about Michelle Malkin.”
–adam
Orin Kerr 06.08.05 at 5:08 pm
I was looking for a catchy word that captured both the very specific topic and the particular ways in which the topic tends to be discussed on blogs — and preferably a word that did so in an amusing way. I used to enjoy Rich Hall’s “Sniglets” sketches on HBO’s “Not Necessarily the News” show back in the 1980s, and I suppose I was hoping to find a sniglet for this.
Jayanne 06.08.05 at 7:42 pm
Pie Wars is catchy and accidentally appropriate (its’s actually about the inalienable right of men to say titties then howl when someone demurs…)
http://www.dailykos.com/main/4
and see
http://www.dailykos.com/
I can’t think of a real sniglet (“sniglet”?) but if you accept Adam’s suggestion, there’s always “feminist blogger X”. (Sorry, Adam.)
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