Just a couple of days ago I left Bloomington and it seems that it is hunting me: My first MZES-Colloquium within a 10-month-period featured Rashawn Ray and Christi Smith, both from Indiana University Bloomington and in these days at Mannheim University. I don’t want to elaborate on the talks, especially since both topics do not lie within my “fields of expertise”. However, here are some impressions concerning the Mannheim-Bloomington-distance.
Rashawn’s presentation was pretty mannheimian as far as it was (i) a quantitative approach and (ii) it dealt with class (identification) in (iii) comparative perspective—the fact that it dealt with class identification was the only not too mannheimian part. Mannheim scholars like Walter Müller (co-developer of CASMIN) are experts on class, class schemata and the like. But: he is probably the only Mannheim guy, who thinks regularly about class identification as well—the rest is using class more or less in the most “objective” way possible (e.g. EGP) and then as (in)dependent variable in a social mobility model and the like—considering both class of origin and class of destination.
Christi’s talk was quite unmannheimian—it was more or less qualitative, involving archival data sources with small N and a case study. Theoretical ideas were also not too well developed. It was interesting, however and again, to see how diverse Sociology is.
