Category Archives: Chapter 4
How Low Can It Go?
Field researchers like to talk about the joys of “getting your hands dirty” by immersing yourself in the ongoing social life of a community. But I’ll bet many researchers would balk at climbing down into sewers to collect their data! … Continue reading
Who We Are and Who We Are Becoming
As a long-term resident of the Boston area and a college professor, it’s heartening to learn that Bostonians spend more on college than residents of others cities. As I write yet another blog entry based on a newspaper article, it’s … Continue reading
The Person Particle?
We all value our individuality, so it might be disconcerting to know that in new research about crowd behavior, some physicists have improved understanding of human behavior by thinking of people as particles. Using cameras and analyses of big data sets … Continue reading
Race in Mexico
Slavery was abolished in Mexico in 1829, long before abolition in the United States during the Civil War. Since then, race has often been overlooked as a basis of social differentiation in Mexico and it has not been measured with … Continue reading
Researching in a Social World 