Meaning & Measurement Mini-Conference

Ronald Breiger— University of Arizona Breiger@Arizona.Edu An analyst of social networks and quantitative models of mobility and stratification, in 1996 I read (on the basis of a tip from a colleague) John Mohr’s “Soldiers, Mothers, Tramps, and Others,” which had been published in the June 1994 issue of Poetics, a journal that has continued to publish much of the innovative research in the “measurement and meaning” area, and learned of the exciting ways in which John was making use of some work of mine as one component in his path-breaking research syntheses.  Thus “bit” by the culture bug, I have tried since then not “just” to be a “methodologist” on the culture team, but to think through the culture issues seriously on their own terms.  Two results have been, first, an effort to engage with Coleman’s and Bourdieu’s quantitative methods as forms of cultures of practices (“A Toolkit for Practice Theory,” 2000), and, second, an essay on relations between quantitative sociological methodology and literary studies (“Writing (and Quantifying) Sociology,” 2002).  Both of these are available (full-text) on my web page, at http://www.u.arizona.edu/~breiger/. I am a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Arizona, and one of the editors of the journal Social Networks.