Areas of Specialization
Criminology, Deviance, and Law
The study of deviant behavior and social control continues to be a major interest of sociologists. How are crimes distributed across social groups? What causes the murder rate to fluctuate? Why are some drugs illegal and others permitted? To what extent is law a mechanism for the suppression of the poor? What explains the increasing prominence of therapeutic forms of social control? These and related questions form the subject matter of the Criminology, Law, and Deviance (CLD) section. Of interest in their own right, these questions are also important for what they tell us about larger issues of wealth, power, and social influence. In the search for answers to them, sociologists of crime, law, and deviance have generated a large body of empirical data as well as an impressive array of explanatory theories. Departmental faculty contribute to the disciplinary building of research and theory with their work on a wide variety of topics, including the social causes of violence, characteristics of high-crime communities, violence against women, crime and the family, drug and alcohol use among employees, procedural justice, deviance and the life-course, the punishment of blacks and whites in the post-bellum South, and social variation in the handling of homicide cases. Faculty in the area also offer a broad range of graduate courses, including Criminal Punishment and Society, Deviance and Social Control, Sociology of Crime, Violence and Society, Organizations and Social Control, and Sociology of Law. Faculty are: Jody Clay-Warner, Mark Cooney, Thomas McNulty, Keith Parker, Paul Roman, and Ronald Simons.
Culture
Issues of culture were already central to the classic statements in sociology. Karl Marx portrayed culture as an epiphenomenon that masked class interests, revealed alienation and fetishized capitalist relations. Emile Durkheim saw religion and moral categories as evidence of a social realty that could not be reduced to utilitarian individualism. Max Weber saw ideas as relatively autonomous and thought that, at certain historical conjunctures, they could have a determinative impact on the direction of social life. Currently the study of culture is one of the most dynamic areas of sociological research. Sociologists of culture tend to focus on sociological explanations of cultural phenomena and emphasize methodological explicitness. Cultural sociologists tend to focus on cultural explanations of social phenomena and emphasize cultural autonomy. Of course these two directions of study can be combined and, in our culture track, they usually are. Our faculty and graduate students work on a wide range of topics including gender and subculture in mountain biking, ethnicity in Chilean women's movements, ritual and protest in maternal social movements, anorexia internet discussion groups, cultural repertoires in the animal rights movement, religion and political conflict in Venezuela, religious movements in Nepal, new age publications, ritual in the military, the culture of institutions, such as education, work and science, and theorization of the micro impacts of macro cultural systems. Faculty are: Mark Cooney, James Dowd, Joseph Hermanowicz, Keith Parker, Patricia Richards, Dawn Robinson, and David Smilde.
Race, Gender, and Class
Since the beginning of sociology, sociologists have been concerned with social phenomena that center around race, class, and gender. They have studied ways in which each of these categories might be used to explain individual and group behavior as well as social and economic outcomes. Increasingly, however, sociologists have begun to explore explicitly the intersectionality of race, class, and gender by asking questions like: In what ways does social class influence the opportunities for social mobility among individuals and groups of racial and ethnic minorities? What gender dynamics are influenced by racial and social class considerations? To what extent are there social, economic, or environmental costs associated with one's gender and racial identity? These are just a few of the questions that sociologists answer using a variety of methodological tools to build empirical and theoretical explanations for the relationship between race, class, and gender. Departmental faculty contribute to the disciplinary building of research and theory with their work on a wide variety of topics, including hate crimes against racial minorities, immigrant assimilation, violence against women, gender equity, urbanism, race, and culture, educational inequality, stratification, gender and globalization, life chance differentials, and quality of life issues among minorities. Faculty are: E.M. Beck, Joyce Bell, Jody Clay-Warner, Linda Grant, Keith Parker, Linda Renzulli, Jeremy Reynolds, Patricia Richards, and Ronald Simons.
Social Psychology
Social psychology is the study of individuals and groups in social context. As such, social psychologists examine the link between micro-level processes and social structure. Many research questions in social psychology focus upon issues of status and power, as well as upon group behavior. Faculty who specialize in social psychology at the University of Georgia hold particular expertise in the study of group processes, emotions, justice, status/power, and social networks. Currently, students and faculty are involved in a wide array of research projects including an NSF-funded study of emotional reactions to over-reward; an examination of the role of fairness as a mediator between strain and school crime; a test of how status affects emotional reactions to others' identity discrepancy; a study of the effects of legitimacy and procedural justice on worker's reactions to inequity; and an exploration of new methodologies to measure emotions and to study status hierarchies. The department offers regular graduate courses in Theories of Social Psychology; Role, Self, and Identity; and Interactions and Inequality. Faculty members in this area also promote multi-methods training. This training is supported by our department's broad course offerings in both qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as through research opportunities in our Laboratory for the Study of Social Interaction (LaSSI), which offers state-of-the-art equipment and space for both experimental and non-experimental social psychological research. Faculty are: Jody Clay-Warner, Linda Grant, Joseph Hermanowicz, Ron Simons and Dawn Robinson.
Work, Occupations, and Organizations
Sociologists have been studying organizations and the structural and cultural conditions of work since the days of Marx and Weber, yet changes in the nature of work continue to provide researchers with new topics to examine. In recent years, for example, researchers who study work, organizations, and occupations, have shown that the phenomena they study contribute to a wide variety of educational, health, family, and community outcomes. They have also found that variations in organizational development, occupational status, and work contexts, reflect broader social, political, economic, and cultural trends. UGA research faculty reflects this diversity. They use quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate and create theory about the contexts in which people work, develop careers, create organizations and interact with organizations. Many faculty study work, organizations, and occupations in the U.S. context, but some also make cross-national comparisons. Departmental faculty study a wide variety of topics, including the intersection of work practices and family life, nonstandard work arrangements, organizational formation, networks and small business outcomes, occupational status and the life course, headhunting and job finding, worker stability, school to work outcomes, work hours, and the diffusion and adoption of organizational innovations. Our faculty offer a broad range of graduate courses, including Occupations, Organizations, Organizations and Social Control, and Work and Industry. Faculty are: E.M. Beck, Joyce Bell, Jody Clay-Warner, James Coverdill, William Finlay, Joseph Hermanowicz, Linda Renzulli, Jeremy Reynolds, and Paul Roman.
