I recently heard someone (Nathan Jurgenson) advise first-year sociology graduate students that they should all blog and tweet.
I blog to read the sound of my own sociological voice, to contribute to the community of social scientists thinking about the questions that move me, to provide information and ideas to the public and hear their responses, and to organize my own thoughts on research and writing.
I and others in the department of sociology to which I am attached have often asked ourselves the same thing. Clearly (since I'm already doing it), I believe the answer is yes. In a perfect world, I'd love to see many - if not most - sociologists blogging, even if Dr. Cohen disagrees, and for one good reason: as a discipline that is, first and foremost, concerned with increasing our understanding of the societies that we live in, we ought to also concern ourselves with making that information available to our fellow citizens, in a language that is both information-rich, and accessible.
Just my two cents, anyways.
The mere idea of writing in language that isn’t deliberately obtuse or jargon-rich strikes me a entirely counter-productive to the trends in my sociology department. As for making what we do accessible to the public, our fellow citizens – are you mad? Only the truly talented can grasp the scale of pointless navel-gazing that my faculty regularly engages in, and only ‘proper academics’ can appreciate it for the enlightened inquiry it truly is. The masses (ie anyone who doesn’t have a phd) are unworthy, misguided, misinformed, and intellectually incapable of understanding what we (I wouldn’t go so far as to say philosopher-kings, but…) have to offer. No, Edwin, I must halt you before this revolutionary, misguided and dangerous project continues.
Now that the view of most academics I know has been dealt with, I’m all in favour of blogging as a student of sociology. Mill’s ‘file of the sociological imagination’ has been a practice of mine for quite some time, but putting what one knows, thinks one knows, or even one’s intellectual ‘groping in the dark’ up for perusal by like-minded others cannot be a bad thing. At worst you expose yourself to an uncaring internet, and at best you develop a style of writing and inquiry that most academics lack. There’s also a particular pleasure in getting to look back on the development of one’s ideas and the discussion amongst friends/colleagues that the process generates. My favourite blogs often show the author’s process of fumbling with a notion and refining it into a concrete question, with all the mistakes and successes along the way. It’s both humbling and enlightening when you see that sort of thing coming from well-known names in whichever field.
The major benefit is simply opening one’s intellectual imagination up to debate and discussion, instead of keeping it locked away from dissenting or critical points of view. Early exposure to the basics of argumentation and scientific principles by way of ordinary folk asking ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ sharpens the scholarship and keeps the ego from achieving the lofty clouds of elitist prejudice.
My nickel (as we no longer have pennies).