We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang seperately. - Ben Franklin

Wisconsin-Madison, Pub Sociology, Urbana-Champaign, Crooked Timber: group blogs, collectively owned and operated, sharing common academic origin and providing one-stop shopping for the interested onlooker. The quality may vary, but in this onlooker's humble opinion, groups are both stronger and merrier.

To fly solo and produce a consistently engaging blog requires both charisma and writing skills that transcend the mundane reality of our academic roots. Some indie bloggers have the upperhand because they've made a name for themselves as transgendered Hollywood mavens, pop culture satirists, actors, or victims of highly publicized indecent-exposure scandals. Among my blogging peers here in Tucson, we apparently prefer the unencumbered liberty of uniblogging to the drunken effervescence of collectiblogging. We fear losing control of our own domains, of limiting our creative impulses and expansionist desires. We think unity is for workers and camraderie for muskateers. We do, however, have an exception among us. Braydenking.com stands quietly to one side, as its author spins long and winding academic tales at the Pub. A question for the rest of us: why have we not followed him?

Is there a community (however small) of blogging sociologists, a latent collective identity pecking at its shell, professing the values of being increasingly "public," and seeking greater cohesion? Is there not one site, one blog, one oneness that can unify and transcend, entertain and inspire? Should there be?

This entry was posted by Jeff, on Saturday, February 12, 2005. You can leave your response.