Where are all the sociology blogs?

When I was preparing to set up this blog, like a good sociologist I did some background research first. I checked what other sociological blogs were out there on the web. I found strangely few of them. The blog that was listed first was ‘The Everyday Sociology Blog’ (http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com), which looks quite interesting with various sociologists posting. Closer inspection, however, reveals that it is part of an academic publishing house’s publicity efforts. Nothing wrong with that, but I was also interested in reading independent sociological writings from academics working in the area.

Other sociology blogs I found were very specialised, had wound up or had a particular barrow to push. I came across one post by Jon Smajda, who writes about the sociology of technology. His post, entitled ‘Why don’t more sociologists blog’?, argues that sociologists are rather diffident about blogging.

According to Smajda, many sociologists are wary of new computer technologies and self-promotion. They are also unsure about reaching out to a wider audience beyond the narrow confines of their academic discipline and writing for a potentially larger, unknown audience (http://jon.smaja.com/2008/08/25/why-dont-more-sociologists-blog).

I personally think that an important part of being a sociologist is to attempt to convey your research findings and views on social issues to a general readership.

Of course, I may have entered the wrong search term (I used ‘sociology blogs’) and there may be dozens  of interesting sociology blogs out there that I have yet to explore. Some I have found include ‘Sociology in Focus’ (http://sociologyinfocus.com), which has some lively posts about popular culture, ‘The Grumpy Sociologist’ (love the name!), which focuses on sports, masculinities, popular culture and violence (http://thegrumpysociologist.blogspot.com), ‘Sociology for the People’ (http://sociologyforthepeople.wordpress.com) by an advocate of public sociology, ‘BodySpaceSociety’ (http://www.bodyspacesociety.eu), looking specifically at digital technologies and ‘Monclair SocioBlog’ (http://montclairsoci.blogspot.com.au), which covers a range of topics by several sociologists.

Welcome to my blog. Given my current interests in medicine and public health, risk, parenting culture and childhood, food and critical weight studies, I will probably be blogging most about these topics. But we’ll see what happens!

Addendum: Since writing this blog, I have discovered some other interesting sociological blogs. Check them out on my Blogroll (scroll down the right side of this page to find it). Also see my Pearltrees ‘Blogs I like‘ and Dave Purcell’s list of sociology and other social science blogs here.