Goffman Told Me, It Is Really Hard to Do That Kind of Thing Well, and That Was About all the Advice I Ever Got from Him

This interview with Joel Best was recorded on August 13, 2007, during the ASA Annual meeting in New York. Dmitri Shalin transcribed the audio recording and Joel Best edited the text and gave his approval for posting the present version in the Erving Goffman Archives. Breaks in the conversation flow are indicated by ellipses. Supplementary information appears in square brackets. Undecipherable words and unclear passages are identified in the text as “[?]”. The interviewer’s questions are shortened a bit in several places

S4_2 Ant-Man: Resolving stars in the Hercules Constellation

In the penultimate fight scene in 2016’s ”Captain America: Civil War”, Ant-Man stuns the other superheroes by revealing his secret power; Giant-Man. The diameter of Giant-Man’s eye has now drastically increased, allowing more light to enter. We determined his optical resolution using the Rayleigh Criterion to be 1.68′′ (arc-seconds), resulting in him being capable of resolving the Zeta Hercules multiple star system in the constellation of Hercules, at a distance of 10.72pc.

S4_1 Pickle Rick: One Rickdiculously Lucky Pickle

We investigate the energy and monochromatic specific intensity of Pickle Rick’s homemade laser gun, which has the god-like power to burn through people. We found the energy to be 2.67MJ, equivalent to 285 AA batteries, and the monochromatic specific intensity to be 1.61 × 1019W m−2sr−1.

Amerikanische Soziologie und die Erforschung sozialer Probleme

Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über Institutionalisierung und Entwicklung der Soziologie der sozialen Probleme und der Weiterentwicklung der einzelnen Themenbereiche zwischen 1920 und den späten 1970er Jahren. Der Konstruktivismus bot den ersten ernstzunehmenden Versuch an, eine soziologische Theorie sozialer Probleme zu entwickeln, hatte jedoch Schwierigkeiten, sich gegenüber der klassischen Lehre durchzusetzen und sich auch anderen Themen zuzuwenden. Zunächst geht es um die Diskussion der verschiedenen Analysetechniken des Konstruktivismus wie etwa Fallstudien. Im Anschluss daran wird die Frage der Aussichten für zukünftige konstruktivistische Untersuchungen sozialer Probleme behandelt und drei viel versprechende Richtungen aufgezeigt: Holstein und Miller identifizierten z.B. 'Soziale-Probleme-Arbeit' als ein wichtiges eigenständiges Thema, und ein beträchtlicher Korpus an Fallstudien ist entstanden, die sich damit beschäftigen, wie Polizisten, Sozialarbeiter und andere 'Soziale-Probleme-Arbeiter' abstrakte Forderungen und allgemeine Policies in Bezug auf soziale Probleme in praktisches Handeln übersetzen. Eine zweite Möglichkeit besteht in der Verbindung konstruktivistischer Untersuchungen sozialer Problem mit Entwicklungen in anderen soziologischen Spezialgebieten.Die offensichtlichste Möglichkeit ist hierbei die Untersuchung sozialer Bewegungen. Die dritte Möglichkeit besteht im Vorhandensein konkurrierender theoretischer Positionen, die zusätzliche wissenschaftliche Arbeiten inspirieren. Dies wird am Beispiel der Soziologie sozialer Bewegungen deutlich. Die Erforschung sozialer Bewegungen ist in den letzten Dekaden aufgeblüht, und dieses Revival ist in nicht geringem Maße auf das Entstehen konkurrierender Ideenwie Ressourcenmobilisierung, Framing, politischeGelegenheiten, Identitätspolitik und neue soziale Bewegungen zurückzuführen. (ICH

Controlling vice: regulating brothel prostitution in St. Paul, 1865-1883

(print) xiv, 175 p.Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Regulating deviance. p.1 -- Controlling brothels in St. Paul. p.14 -- Careers in brothel prostitution. p.35 -- The culture of the brothel. p.58 -- Respectable responses to regulation. p.79 -- Officials and the decline of regulation. p.101 -- Social control: strategy, practicality, and morality. p.117 -- Principal brothels in St. Paul, 1865-1883. p.141 -- Notes. p.143 -- Index. p.17

Constructionist Studies of Social Problems: How We Got Here, and Where We Ought to Go

The principal theory of social problems (at least in the United States) is the social constructionist perspective, which defines social problem in terms of a claimsmaking process, rather than as a type of social condition. This perspective emerged in the 1970s, and its spread has led to many hundreds of case studies, both by American scholars and by sociologists in many other countries. While constructionists may be pleased by their perspective’s success, they need to be aware that there are many academic fads. In order to avoid becoming a forgotten intellectual fad, constructionists need encourage several sorts of new contributions: They need to move beyond case studies and concentrate on synthesizing the research that exists; they need to foster the spread of constructionism in many more countries; they need to expand their focus beyond the present with studies of social problems construction in the past and the future; they need to develop clear methodological principles; and they need to foster collaboration with scholars in other disciplines

S4_3 Dome Sweet Dome

In the instant classic ‘The Simpsons Movie’ the town of Springfield becomes trapped by a massive glass dome. We calculated that the residents of Springfield have at the most 28 hours to escape the dome before they suffocate to death.

S4_4 Roberto Carlos' 'Impossible' Free Kick

In the Tournoi de France 1997, Roberto Carlos scored a free kick in a 1-1 draw between France and Brazil. This goal would go on to make headlines and feature in highlight reels for many years to come. Our calculations show the force applied to the football by Carlos to be 320.2 N at an angle of 9.84 degrees from the initial direction of the ball

S4_5 If You Liked It, You Should Have Put A Ring On It

In this paper, we explore the potential energy to be harnessed by constructing a Dyson Ring, and produce a ball-park figure of the associated costs. We find that there is the possibility to collect approximately 6 ×1010 Watts of power, and that an initial investment of £50 billion could suffice to install such a structure.