Forum Post: Honors Thesis - Would Love Input!
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 9, 2011, 9:01 p.m. EST by Genevieve
(0)
from Bloomfield Hills, MI
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Hello All!
My name is Genevieve and I'm a senior at Vanderbilt University. I'm writing my honors thesis on the Occupy protests and am having difficulty narrowing my research question. Instead of continually fumbling around in my mind on what would make a good topic, I was hoping I could come to y'all for advice. What do you personally want to see written? What claim do you believe in? What hypothesis do you stand behind and just wish someone would just go out there and back it up with some data?
What do you think is the most sociologically interesting thing about the protests?
In essence, my paper will follow the basic structure of: What seems to be X is in reality non-X. Any ideas?
Thanks!! Genevieve
If you're going to do it on sociologically unexpected phenomena it might be fun to compare the actual social makeup of the movement with several of the most common stereotypes, including the whole hippie thing and the argument that the movement is primarily composed of anarchists and communists. Pull up demographic studies and/or go down there and do your own to see who is primarily protesting. You might also want to compare that with a similar survey of people on the forums (just figure out a protocol that screens for trolls before you try surveying this board; it gets like a politically oriented version of 4chan here sometimes).
If you want to do it as a thesis in comparative economics or public policy you could also pull back and take a look at the different economic systems proposed by different members of OWS as solutions to the current economic situation. You'd be doing most of the work sorting through primary sources discussing different economic theories and American public policy initiatives, and then interviewing different members of OWS about their opinions to learn who supports what and why. If you're interested in the latter message me and I'd be happy to talk to you about my personal beliefs and attitudes.
[Removed]
I would do a study on the lice infiltration in the various camps. How does pestilence affect the movement? What diseases of the skin result from revolution? Do people go home when they start to itch?