Abstract
This article examines four overlapping structural changes in the Pacific Sociological Association’s membership since the 1970s: (1) a burgeoning student participation, (2) the seeming withdrawal of faculty from research-based universities, (3) the feminization of the PSA’s leadership, and (4) the fading proportion of men at all levels of the organization. Instead of signaling a weakened professional association, however, these changes point to an energized PSA that leads other American regional sociological associations on indicators valued by sociologists. Three principal data sources inform this analysis: PSA administrative records; content analysis of the PSA meeting programs in 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2013; and the 2013 PSA conference registration data. I use my experiences at University of Oregon to illustrate some themes.
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Notes
The PSA region comprises the 17 westernmost states and provinces of the USA, Mexico, and Canada. Internally, PSA divides itself into three regions and rotates the annual meeting among them. The Northern Region comprises Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. The Central Region comprises northern California (Fresno and north), Colorado, Hawaii, northern Nevada (north of Las Vegas), and Utah. The Southern Region comprises southern Arizona, Baja California, California (south of Fresno), Chihuahua, New Mexico, and southern Nevada (Las Vegas).
Student and non-student memberships could not be distinguished from each other in 1992 and 1993.
Note: The New England Sociological Association is defunct.
Note: I did not examine each participant’s name and affiliation to determine student/non-student status. It is very possible that these institutions retain their prominence on the PSA program with non-faculty participants.
Undoubtedly, certain large graduate programs in the region, such as UCLA, produce more young scholars who stay in the PSA region and whose participation may well exceed University of Oregon’s alumni, but I am not in a position to assess them.
See http://sociology.uoregon.edu/graduate/phdlisting.php for a complete list of University of Oregon Ph.D. alumni.
Katharine Jocher SSS 1943–44, Gladys Bryson ESS 1945–46, Jessie Bernard ESS 1950–51, Dorothy Swaine Thomas ASA 1952, Mirra Komarovsky ESS 1954–55, and Ruth Shonle Cavan MSS 1960–61.
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Acknowledgments
This article has benefited from the comments of Dennis Downey, Amanda Michiko Shigihara, and Chuck Hohm and from the assistance of Karen Edwards and Roberta Spalter-Roth of the American Sociological Association, Leslie Elrod of the North Central Sociological Association, and Emily Mahon of the Eastern Sociological Society.
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Gwartney, P.A. Elite Dilution or Saved by the Belles? The Changing Social Demography of the Pacific Sociological Association. Am Soc 45, 226–248 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-014-9225-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-014-9225-x