Writing in Sociology

Synopsis

With humor and empathy, this handbook provides undergraduate and early-career graduate students guidance in sociological writing of all kinds. It offers unusual approaches to developing ideas into research questions, utilizing research literature, constructing research papers, and completing different kinds of course writing (including case studies, theory papers, and applied social science projects). The book has the tone of Becker s Writing For Social Scientists, but is more targeted to the undergraduate or early-career graduate student struggling with a first research paper. By focusing on how to think about the goals and strategies implicit in each section of a writing project, this book provides accessible advise to novice sociological writers. This handbook is designed to help students understand the expectations, guidelines, and standards for writing sociology. Individual teachers may provide additional criteria for their assignments, but basic information about sociology writing tasks are defined in this handbook. It is a compendium of tutorials, extended handouts, clear instructions, helpful hints and other potentially useful tools for you to use in approaching your assignments. It will not create the magic mentioned above, but it will help clear up the details that we all use as excuses to avoid writing: How do I define my problem? How do I find relevant information about my topic? How many citations (and what kind) do I need? What format should I use? What should I include? How do I present my findings?One of the most direct paths to the sociological imagination is through writing. Good writing is connected to reading and thinking in magical ways we know that the more we do of all three, the better we become at each one.This guide encourages students to read and notice what makes texts compelling. Then, to write some more. In the process of writing (and re-writing) sociology well, students will improve thinking sociologically; they will become better readers, thinkers, and writers for whatever future is theirs.