I read every Foucault book at Barnes and Noble (in the store, I couldn't afford them) and wrote a book review in Bovine Sociology. Please, hire me
Be honest -- how many of you theorybros have a single publication
-
What is OP referencing
OP is referencing the phenomenon we all know and love of grad students (usually but not always male) who feel like their dissertation is so theoretically groundbreaking that they couldn’t be bothered to parcel out an article or two out of it that would actually be accessible to people less well versed in CR / Foucault / Bourdieu / pragmatics etc. Instead, they work for years and year on a mostly unreadable, far too long book that ends up coming out in hardcover only. They often share the expectation that they would get an R1 job based on their promise as a great theoretician.
-
^ I only discovered that I was a theorist later into my gradschool career because I was put off by all the self-identified 'theorists' out there - many of whom would act just this way. Since then I've published in top theory journals, and I admit that it's nice to leave all those pretentious people, who used to intimidate me, in the dust.
-
I didn’t consider myself a sociological theorist until after graduating. My dissertation didn’t set out to create a groundbreaking new framework (though it was a pretty groovy approach). Theory is the kind of thing that takes time to develop; the ideas have to mature. You have to mature. You can’t start from the abstract and ‘apply’ theory to particular casework - it has to be empirically discovered. I only started calling myself a theorist once I was getting hired for the specialization. It was weird at first - like wtf am I, some dead white dude from early-modern Europe? It takes more time and effort than a dissertation-turned-hardcover.
-
the ideas have to mature. You have to mature.
Exactly this. Forcing the theoretical breakthrough when you're a grad student just doesn't work. Folks who try to jump the gun more often than not end up being completely ignored by the discipline.Exactly. Whether you like it or not we're in the era of middle-range theories, and you need to get a good grasp of empirical works in your area before doing anything theoretical.
This isn't the 70s anymore and developing your own take on something-ism after reading Bettelheim or Luhmann isn't going to impress many people. -
^^ ha, it's pretty interesting/funny that you see anything noteworthy in my mention of Bettleheim.
When my boomer parents were in college, he was a household name. Now he's an oddity: a bit like something you find under inches of dust in a hippie grandmother's attic.
-
There are some good young theorists around. While I don’t think they should have to run regressions for 10 or 20 years to gain legitimacy before doing a deep theory dive - for the simple reason that different people have different interests - I do think young theorists should worry about landing a job. It’s already hard, don’t make it harder with a pure theory dissertation.
Have some empirics or the market will hit you even harder than it hits the average sociologist.
-
First book I see on Palgrave Macmillan: “Making Sport Great Again
The Uber-Sport Assemblage, Neoliberalism, and the Trump Conjuncture”
I’m wondering what qualitative people/ethnographers think, I mean, it seems you need a new concept or theoretical development to get published.
But then a really solid ethnography with good results and robust application of established theory is probably better than something that half breaks new ground..
-
“Blending critical theory, conjunctural cultural studies, and assemblage theory, Making Sport Great Again introduces and develops the concept of uber-sport: the sporting expression of late capitalism’s conjoined corporatizing, commercializing, spectacularizing, and celebritizing forces. On different scales and in varying spaces, the uber-sport assemblage is revealed both to surreptitiously reinscribe the neoliberal preoccupation with consumption and to nurture the individualized consumer subject. Andrews further probes how uber-sport normalizes the ideological orientations and associate affective investments of the Trump assemblage’s authoritarian populism. Even as it articulates the regressive politicization of sport, Making Sport Great Again serves also as a call to action: how might progressives rearticulate uber-sport in emancipatory and actualizing political formations? ”
Ok for the record I’m really into Deleuze but I also think an assemblage can just be a way for someone to make up whatever ‘container’ for a phenomenon they want (and include anything they want). I’m really interested in how this isn’t just a discourse that has been essentiallised into dogma.