Sociology on crack

Let me tell you about this little conference known as the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, one I attended for the second time this past week. Basically, it's the invasion of around 5,000 sociologists (yes, five thousand, I didn't put extra zeroes on there by mistake) to several downtown hotels in a brand name city. The conference is strangely scheduled over a weekend, but that doesn't stop everyone and their dogs who do anything related to sociology from showing up.

There are about 500 sessions where people present the research they doing, all across the sociological spectrum. Everything from the demographics of immigration to the state of race relations to the sociology of food. There are plenty of sessions whose names I don't even understand, so I'm sure I wouldn't understand the presentations.Here are a few examples:
"Hansel's Pebbles: Theory as Wayfinding in Communication and Information Technology Research"
"Animal & Homo Sapien Interactions: Theory, Symbolic Interaction, and Policy"
"Identity, Discourse, and Civil Society"
"Social Construction of Intelligence: Towards a Sociology of the Institutionalization of Human Cognition"
You got me what any of that junk is about!

Last year I attended sessions. Most of them are freakin' boring. Everyone wants to be accepted to present research because you can put it on your resume. Nobody actually wants to present.

The second thing people do at these conferences (and really the much more important thing than presenting or going to sessions) is networking. Everyone sets up gadzillions of meetings with the people who do research in their field. People looking for jobs do this even more, as they are trying to get some foot in the door with the people who are looking to hire. Given that there is just a hotel lobby for people to meet in (all the meeting rooms are taken up by the hundreds of research presentations), it seriously looks like networking gone bonkers. Hundreds and thousands of people trying to find places to plop down and have one-on-one conversations. I seriously think the hotels we meet at must hate us for infesting their lobbies for days on end.

The third thing people do is eat nice meals and drink a lot. All meals you get reimbursed for, since it's the equivalent of a business trip. People go crazy with nice dinners, ordering everything they want. And second, people go crazy at night going out to bars. I think lots of people come from small college towns with a limited selection of restaurants and bars, so being in a big city unleashes the beast inside them. Luckily, you can just play off heavy drinking as "networking" and nobody can think badly of you. It's pretty amusing watching your professors get drunk at these conferences and then have to preside over sessions with a hangover.

I would also like to highlight the extreme nerd factor. Pretty much, if you're at a sociology conference, you are a nerd. Sure, that fact gets diluted in your mind because you are surrounded by thousands of other nerds, but the fact is EVERYONE there is a nerd! The last day of the conference they had a student book giveaway. All the book dealers at the conference who had extra textbooks and sociology books they didn't want to ship back give them away for free. There was a huge line and a CRAZY mad dash for books once the doors opened. I had one book snatched out of my hand while I was picking it up from the table. These people are not only nerds, but CRAZY nerds.

So, for an amusing time, come to Montreal next August and witness the comedy of an annual ASA meeting.