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UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Department of Sociology
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1994-95
(This Bibliography, the Readings for Sociology 323, and the Readings for Sociology 301-302, constitute the Reading List for the Preliminary Examination.)
The preliminary examination attempts to assess basic competence in a number of sociological fields. These fields, as listed in the following reading list, are not the ten holy and immutable categories of sociological inquiry; instead, they are clusters of theory and research currently recognized by the discipline and, particularly, by the faculty of this Department. To be competent in a field means to be familiar with the classic theoretical statements and major research endeavors that have animated the field, and to be knowledgeable about the contemporary debates and issues within it. The prelim readings for each field are offered not as a canon for the field, but as a program of reading that will help the student attain competence at this general level. Such competence may also be bolstered through many varieties of sociological discourse, including courses, other readings, and participation in seminars, colloquia and discussions with fellow sociologists.
Reproduced below is the original message as prepared by Chris Swanson on how this 1994 - 95 version of the prelim summaries collection came about. While most of his comments, i.e., those noted under "Disclaimer" and "Note on Authorship and Citation" still apply, one notable and obvious (for those of you who have been checking up on the new developments of this homepage faithfully) exception is that the SSR is no longer making attempts at upgrading this particular collection of summaries. Instead, all of the upgrading efforts are now concentrated in the newly created summary collection section based on the prelim bibliography of the years 1997 - 98.
- Kosuke Nikaido
Upon hearing that some people were experiencing difficulty in actually getting the disks, we thought that it might be a good idea to bring SSR up to cruising speed on the information superhighway. Thus the idea for the on-line version of the Summary Archive and the SSR Web Site was born. As of the establishment of the site, only summaries for those readings appearing on the 1994-95 bibliography have been reformatted for access on the WWW. Eventually, we hope to be able to reformat and make available the entire collection of summaries for the site. Please check the What's New message to find out if which summaries have recently been added.
Due to practical constraints of formatting large amounts of material for this collection, at this point in time some of the figures and charts which appear on the disk version of the collection do not appear in the on-line summaries. We hope that these features will be available in future updated versions of this on-line collection. But for the time-being we will note the location of said missing items.
Although it may at times seem like a glacial process, we are assured that the bibliography for the prelim is indeed a dynamic, changing creature. This being the case (if only mostly in theory), we will have need to update the summary archive as new readings are added to the list. If you notice that a summary is not available for a particular reading and you are able to provide one, please contact us at ssr1@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu for more information. We would greatly appreciate your donation and (if you would like) will add you to our list of contributors.
**DISCLAIMER**
Anyone familiar with the WWW no doubt has run across many of these messages.
But what Web site would be complete without one. The main reason we started
the prelim summary project was that we thought that there were better and
more bearable ways for an entering cohort to spend its first summer than
in logging long hours in front of a computer typing up summaries. We thought
that (and maybe this is a little radical) it might be more productive to
spend that extra time discussing the readings or actually getting familiar
with more of the actual texts. Having said this, it is probably obvious
that the greatest appeal of a service such as this is to the first year
cohorts. As time goes on and the readings on the bibliography change, the
archive will increasingly become a more generalized resource with less of
a focus on the prelim readings. So, we do hope that the archive will be
of use to those of us further along the program and our professional careers
as well. Whether you are preparing for the prelim, taking Laumann's Organizational
Analysis class, brushing up on something you read a couple years ago, or
just browsing, we hope that the Summary Archive will be of use.
**NOTE ON AUTHORSHIP AND CITATION**
The summaries included here appear through the generosity of our contributors,
so please don't take advantage of their kindness. Although we do not currently
list authors of individual summaries, we do maintain an updated list of
contributors. If you find that you have written a summary appearing here
but are not included on the credits, please let us know which summary is
yours and we will gladly add your name.
The collection is not intended to be mass reproduced for distribution. But if you would like to make copies of some of the summaries for you personal use, we do ask that you do include a copy of our file listing the contributors (contrib.html). Although we discourage it, should you directly cite any of the materials found in the archive in a formal manner, please use the following acknowledgment:
"Summary Title" SSR Prelim Summary Archive.
Society for Social Research, University of Chicago.