My (limited) career

In my opinion, sociology is basically an interpretative discipline. With this I mean that the task of sociology, as a reflexive way of knowledge, is to “understand the reason behind”, the hidden sense that is expressed in the social phenomena. Because of that the main skill of a sociologist, following my point of view is “to see beyond the appearances”, to, from the empirical events occurred in the society, find sources of domination, inequality, idiosyncrasy, etc. Sociology has developed many theories and to analyze and apply them correctly and honestly (recognizing the purposes searched by the investigations) is also an obligatory skill. Besides this, sociology is nourished by different “sciences”, which grant the data and some theoretical elements to sociology for it to increase its capacity of explain the sense of social phenomena. For this reason, a good sociologist has to have clear notions of economy, political sciences, history, statistics, psychology, “massmediology”, etc. None of these skills are inborn, all can be learnt, even the capacity of investigate or the ability to make rapport with the people.
Sadly the career of sociology in Universidad de Chile has a different conception of what the sociology task is. Even though they believe, like me, that sociology must has a basic teaching in diverse disciplines, is its interpretive character the point they don’t consider as central. Instead of that, for them sociology must search the predictability more than the “verstehen”, the understanding. Because of that there are many courses of statistic, quantitative methodologies and ramifications of sociology with a positivist standard point of view, like public policies. On the other hand, interpretive areas related with sociology like psychoanalysis, theory of ideology, qualitative methodologies are in disadvantage.

For all this reasons, I think that my career gives me the right tools to be inserted in the “sociology’s labor market”, but it denies the direct possibility of being a change actor... the possibility of learn, understand and act "in agreement" with the exploited.

music

I’m not gonna talk specifically about one piece of technology. Instead of that this post is about a kind of technological device: the portable music players. The first one was a “walkman” that works with a tape named “cassette”. For its time it was so freakin’ cool, be able to walk through the city with a “soundtrack of your life” made the experience of music way different than before. My family gives me my first walkman when I was twelve and since that day I could never stop of using some music player.

Afterwards appears a new device whose qualities were better sound and more control over the reproduction. Its name is “discman” and it play “compact discs”. The bad part of the matter was that the discman is way bigger than any other music player, so went out of fashion quickly (i had one but I dislike it for its weight... but obviouly I used it a lot anyways), leavin’ its place to the next device, that is very superior than its predecessors.

The mp3 player appears to stay. The fact that they could play music without carrying the music in a separated object makes it get over the walkman and discman’s portability problems. Mp3 players are very small and they can transport a lot of music and, also, carry information of another kind (text, video, etc.). I get one five years ago and I constantly change it, adding more capacity of music transportation.

But beyond this chronology, the fact is that I can live without some music player, I always need to feel some music to accompany my daily activities or for the special moments... I practically can’t stop to listenin’ music... so you can imagine what the life would be for me without my music player: it would suck.

Valdivia

From the few destinations that I have been my favorite place is a lovely town called Valdivia. It is located in the fourteenth region “de los Ríos”, next to several rivers (that indeed is only one river that is named differently in different zones of the city). My first visit was in 2008; I went alone and stayed there for a week, by myself (sleeping in hostels along the city). Travelling alone is very different than a tour with family or a trip with friends. I spend most of the time just walking hearin’ music, watching nature, visiting the woods (like the “Jardín Botánico”) and eating the great local food. The best part was when I took a ride to an island near to the downtown named Mancera. In that island there is a lot of viewpoints where you can see how the rivers encounter with the sea, is a really beautiful image. You just can make it to Mancera from the dock of Niebla. That zone of Valdivia, besides Corral and Mancera, has a collection of castles named “fuertes”, historical places that relate the history of Valdivia as a important port when Chile was a colony of the Spanish crown. History and nature are the main attractions of this lovely city. If you go there don’t miss drinkin' a beer in the Kunstmann restaurant! They’re the best of the best!

Pierre Bourdieu

P. Bourdieu is a French sociologist, born in Argelia in 1930, who has developed a theory capable of being applied on several social phenomena, like politics, culture, economy and others related with them (culture: sciences, media, religion, etc; politics: politic positions, democracy, etc; economy: social classes, exchange, etc). He has a lot of publications, but the capital ones are The practical sense and The distinction. In each one of his works, Bourdieu apply the same scheme that makes him a absolute reference for the sociology field (especially for the culture or symbolic sociology): the social fact and the behavior of the people are directly related neither to an omnipresent structure nor to the free will of agents, but to a “mixture of both of them”; the correct concepts to explain the social phenomena are “field” and “habitus”… people act on fields (of any of the aspects of society) with specific inner rules that people “respect” but, on the other hand, the habitus, the “biography” (in very simple words) merge with the rules of the field: both elements “touch” each other, developing the social phenomena as it express. In short, he searches for a way to eliminate the classical sociologist dichotomy between structure and individual action. Which is very useful to learn about ”social things” that appear to be strange, irrational, but, if they’re “correctly seen”, indeed appear to be reasonable.

Pierre Bourdieu dies reciently, in Paris, in January 23th of 2002, victim of cancer.