Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article: Second Edition
Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and End Your Thesis, Book, or Article: Second Edition Books
- ISBN13: 9780226041322
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Product Description
Students and researchers all write below pressure, and those pressures—most lamentably, the desire to impress your audience rather than to communicate with them—often lead to pretentious prose, academic pretentiousness, and, not infrequently, novelist’s block.
Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published near twenty years ago, Writing for Social Scientists has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker’s thought is clear: in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then start writing. Revise. Do again.
It is not everlastingly an simple administer, as Becker wryly relates. Decades of teaching, researching, and writing have given him bounty of material, and Becker neatly exposes the foibles of academia and its “publish or perish” atmosphere. Long-windedness, the passive voice, inserting a “the way in which” when a simple “how” will do—all these mechanisms are a part of the social structure of academic writing. By shrugging off such impediments—or at the very least, putting them aside for a few hours—we can reform our work habits and start writing lucidly without worrying about grades, peer approval, or the “literature.”
In this new edition, Becker takes account of major changes in the computer tools available to writers today, and also substantially expands his analysis of how academic institutions make problems for them. As competition in academia grows increasingly heated, Writing for Social Scientists will provide solace to a new generation of frazzled, would-be writers.
Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published near twenty years ago, Writing for Social Scientists has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker’s thought is clear: in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then start writing. Revise. Do again.
It is not everlastingly an simple administer, as Becker wryly relates. Decades of teaching, researching, and writing have given him bounty of material, and Becker neatly exposes the foibles of academia and its “publish or perish” atmosphere. Long-windedness, the passive voice, inserting a “the way in which” when a simple “how” will do—all these mechanisms are a part of the social structure of academic writing. By shrugging off such impediments—or at the very least, putting them aside for a few hours—we can reform our work habits and start writing lucidly without worrying about grades, peer approval, or the “literature.”
In this new edition, Becker takes account of major changes in the computer tools available to writers today, and also substantially expands his analysis of how academic institutions make problems for them. As competition in academia grows increasingly heated, Writing for Social Scientists will provide solace to a new generation of frazzled, would-be writers.
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In the final chapter of his book, Becker writes that “(r)eading this book will not solve all your writing problems. It will hardly solve any of them.” I agree.
Rating: 2 / 5
Several others reviewed this book already. but I want to mention a top on this book. You may possibly peep into what is the life of scholar throughout reading this book. this book is not merely writing guide. there are many other books on writing. but the place where this book should be place is not there, I reckon. the author, he himself has some name in Sociology, show you what is the life of scholar by the topic of writing. he persuasively illustrate the dread to write of not only graduate students but also professional scholars. I urge to read Randall Collins¡¯ ¡®The Sociology of Philosophies¡¯, if you want to peep into more details on the life of scholar. I reckon Collins¡¯s book is better, volumetric and systematic on that matter. But the earn of this book is that you can capture what is like living as scholar in more private sight.
Rating: 5 / 5
The orange cover with the pathetic cartoon character starts Becker’s book out so fascinatingly. Orange of all colors. What serious academic novelist would write a book and grace these cherished thoughts with a bright orange cover seasoned with a hunching, disheveled, befuddled wreck of a character in desperate and dire need of a four-year sabbatical? What possibly may possibly be the top?
The stereotype abuses of academia come to mind: stale, formulaic, “a craven surrender to custom”, grave, a case study in lethargy. All the concentration on ultra-definition of disciplines, protocol ad infinitum, political positioning, and methodologies presents a convenient hideout from ever having to really say anything. All the excess concentration on the medium and style of writing oft-times has sacrificed any real thought, making a gas law of writing: Having small to say, no matter how small, can be said in whatever part required, no matter how long.
All of this comes back to Becker and the orange cover. It is correctly one of his points in this book that the meticulously perfect and judicious assumptions surrounding intellectual life get in the way of excellent writing. The assumption that there is one right way to do something, for example, does not aid intellectual curiosity. Academic plotting may be the venue for the most creative and imaginative work to date. There are an infinite number of ways to view anything and an equally vast quantity of corollaries to a million other subjects. Many of the fantastic intellectuals have followed this trend in diversity demonstrating amusing and sometimes alarming private eccentricities. They are manifestly unique in their thought and private lives, and have become beloved for it. Therefore, Becker’s call to give up the need for “one aptly way” remains excellent advice for the introduction into academic writing (and the adult world, for that matter). Writing rules may not be as hard and as quick as some grammarians have suggested.
Dread also seems to be at the heart of the scholarly writing problem. Becker’s chapter on personae and authority drives at the concept of dread in revealing one’s humanity to others. People are slow to reveal fears, especially professionally. Openly emerging from scholarly facades of perfection requires humility. Titles of superiority and elitism diminish in such an environment. The status quo in academic writing is a convenient way to hide one’s dread.
In his first chapter, “Freshman English for Graduate Students,” Becker’s call for simplicity in writing is valid, but he might be overstating the top. Anyone trying to really apply the freshman English style of writing to academic sociological writing might find it trying. It does not work very well. His top must be, then, to cut the verbiage that does not aid in understanding the essential thought of the writing. His call for using less academic words, but, may be to some extent simplistic. Some concepts used in the sociological sciences cannot be clarified well in layman’s terms (for example: “weltanschauung,” “epistomology,” “ontology,” etc.). Furthermore, the purpose of scholarship is not to boil everything down to a lowest common denominator. The scholarly quest is to lift the bar and to encourage others to do the same.
Regardless of these few clarifying details, everyone reading the book will probably identify with many of the various messages and be properly reprimanded throughout the writing administer. It is a nice insight and reminder place forth by Becker to be genuine people, even in the realms of academic writing. mdm
Rating: 5 / 5
Dears
I am grateful buy book in Amazon. My order arrive in the predict day , in state perfect. All the in rank I need for choice the book was available before in the site. Excellent work, Amazon person.
Óthon Pereira
from Brazil
Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and End Your Thesis, Book, or Article: Second Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
Rating: 5 / 5
Howard S. Becker, the author of “Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and End Your Thesis, Book, or Article”, is a social scientist. Of course, no respectable scientist, social or non-social, would dare generalizing to other fields of knowledge the findings laboriously made in his own field. So, Becker conservatively addresses his book just to “social scientists”. Writing is, but, an essential aptitude for any scientist. In fact, it is no less crucial to the survival of the scientist, as a scientist, than his or her own aptitudes to read or reckon logically. So, what Becker writes in his book is just as vital to social scientists as it is to any other kind of scientist. Quite paradoxically, most scientists initiate and develop their scientific careers without devoting a single minute of their time to specifically learning how to write. Anyone would agree that it is impossible to play excellent tennis without proper training, and whoever wished to become a professional tennis player by just playing by the side of would very likely be regarded as downright naive. This is, but, what most scientists do when it comes to writing. Becker’s book does not fall in the category of the so called “how-to” books. It is, rather, a private reflection written in a very entertaining and chatty style by an academic who addresses his fellow academics, not from the top of a pulpit, but from the cultural standpoint of the beliefs, traditions, aspirations and rites of their common academic life. It covers, in this way, a remarkably diverse collection of central aspects of scientific writing, such as the crucial role of editing and rewriting (and rewriting, and rewriting), the dread of scorn, the encounters with novelist’s block, or the urge to yield pompous and obscure texts. As the book progresses, the readers notice that they are being faced with the main fallacies of habitual scientific writing and that they are being helped to build their own attitude on how these fallacies can be properly handled. One such fallacy resides in the belief that there is only one aptly way of putting things down on paper. In fact, most less experienced writers tend to judge that to write well is to get the text aptly the first time. So, they stumble in the beginning of their text, unproductively trying to work out the best beginning (and believing that, if they don’t, they will not be able to proceed). Often, they also stumble when trying in vain to get the best plot for their text. Indeed, they seem to ignore that a significant part of our knowledge is built through experimentation, and that experimentation starts surrounded by our own minds, as we tentatively combine thoughts and try to make sense out of them.
Rating: 5 / 5