In the tradition of the UW-Madison Sociology of Beer and Bourbon (SBB) brownbag seminar, the contributors to Bad Hessian will be presenting a short paper at this year’s annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. You can read the abstract below.

Title: Cooperative Work and Relational Boozing: A Computational Social Science Approach

Previous authors have noted the strong link between cooperative work and networks of common interaction. Neo-institutionalist theory suggests a number of mechanisms that contribute to this connection (Powell and DiMaggio 1991), while network theorists suggest mechanisms inherent to the interpersonal structures (Benkler 2006; Shirky 2008). In this paper, we propose a new mechanism that mediates this relationship, which we call relational boozing. Relational boozing draws heavily on the tradition of relational sociology (Emirbayer 1997) but also integrates insights from “boozer” theory (Slez 2013; that one guy from Berkeley… um what’s his name 2001; Tilly 1978). Using big data network analytic methods and nonparametric propensity score matching, we analyze bar crawling patterns of over 18,000 graduate students from the meetings of the 2010-2012 American Sociological Association, along with recent publication records. We find that students who had at least one bar crawling compatriot were three times as likely to coauthor a published article than their lonely counterparts (p < 0.00001). Our findings are corroborated by qualitative data, in which partnered respondents replied, “WOOOoooo I put my hands up, they’re playing my song, the butterflies fly aw- SING IT WITH ME CHUCK.” Further work will be required to assess whether these findings hold for future years and in different, more party-hardy locales.

Come party with us! RSVP on Facebook

Where: Peculier Pub
When: August 10, 8 PM – ??
Why: You need a night cap to calm your nerves before/after your presentation

(shoutout to Aliza Luft for making the spiffy flyer!)