Stephen Vaisey

Once upon a time, sociologists believed that human beings were “cultural dopes” who unproblematically internalized the norms and values of their culture and acted on them. An early dissenter from this view was C. Wright Mills who argued that our ideas and “values” were not motives, but rather served as “vocabularies of motive”; in other words, as justifications for our actions to ourselves and others. Now virtually everyone working in cultural sociology has adopted the Millsian view, and the very notion of culture seems unthinkable without the words “toolkit” and “repertoire.” But can’t culture motivate as well as justify? Of course, as with all thorny dichotomies in social theory, the answer is, “Yes, both are important.” But that’s where the fun begins! My goal is to investigate, both theoretically and empirically, how and under what circumstances cultural ideas can either motivate or justify behavior.

This is a catch-all category for my interest in what I sometimes refer to as “weird methods.”  While I am certainly no enemy of general linear models, I’ve found that sometimes relational methods—network analysis, multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, correspondence analysis, qualitative comparative analysis (fuzzy or extra crispy!)—can shed light on patterns in the data that provide additional insights into “actually existing” social life.  As a result of my interest (some might say obsession) with exploring and learning new methods, I’ve found myself working on a number of projects outside my main area of interest.

For the fuzzy-set/QCA program Kyle Longest and I have developed, type "net search fuzzy" from within Stata.

In this area of research, I inquire about the micro-level consequences of the macro-level expansion of educational credentialing.  For the moment, I steer clear of the debate over the causes of this phenomenon (unintended consequences or social closure?) and focus on the way credential inflation influences the experience of workers.