Social Science Academia

Part of the "academic aesthetic" series, this sect of it models the lifestyle of those who have passion for psychology, sociology, economics, history, anthropology, geography, linguistics, and area studies (Eastern European, Jewish, military, African indigenous, etc.). 
The "social science aesthetic" itself is divided between the aesthetics of political activism and Dark Academia (which it borrows from the humanities). The older and tenure-track researchers & lecturers tend to adopt the dark academia code while the students tend towards punk, queer, and some Science Academia fashion. Overall it doesn't have a very cohesive and easily distinguishing identity. 
Some of that has to do with the evolution of the label "nerd". A nerd originated in the 70s and 80s as someone who was obsessed with academics, especially physical sciences and computers. With computing came the advent of video games, which meant later most people weren't interested learning to program and fix hardware, but be good at video games. A "nerd" was obsessive of a particular subject, but label was more began to apply to people obsessed with superhero comics (Marvel, DC), anime & manga, and sci-fi movies (Star Wars, Star Trek). Eventually these overshadowed the original application of the word "nerd" being someone obsessed with academics as the 21st century rolled in. 
Physical sciences in particular were able to gain larger public attention in the 1960s with the "Space Race", so the US government funded heavily into science education to assure their side didn't lose to the USSR. Mutually exclusive was how Karl Sagan was so good at making physics popular to the public, and the emergence of channels like Animal Planet and Discovery Channel. 
In contrast the same era (1960s) was the PEAK of interest in the social sciences in the US. At the same time the Civil Rights movements reliably threatened the priorities and well-being of the US government, and the Baldwin-Kennedy meeting and the protests to the Vietnam War. Ironically it was social scientists themselves that set the stage for its self demise. The plan was outlined in a 1975 Trilateral Commission Report called The Crisis of Democracy by Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki. The chief recommendations were to 1) Militarize the police 2) Slash civic education. 
One science advanced US interests (physical sciences) while the other threatened its existence as an institution (social sciences). There are fields like marketing, public relations, and organizational sciences that borrow theory from the social sciences, but practice of the pure of it outside the dictates of independent of private & government interest is discouraged. 
However there's an enlargening revival of publics interest in the social sciences. Major historical events that have taken place such as the 2008 Financial Crisis, 2020 George Floyd riots, the rise of Donald Trump, student loans, and accelerating wealth inequality among Millennials and Gen Z have sparked the need for them to ask why these things are happening to them. So with that emerges the need for spaces that span the supervision and needs of the private and government. This applies just as much to the physical sciences as much as the social sciences, especially on issues like climate change, indigenous care of lands, and nuclear armaments. 
==Visuals== 
*Bookshelf + university press books
*Pictures of field founders & major practitioners
* Globes
*Maps
*Historical & archeological objects
*Model of human brain
*Statistical graphs & equations
*Lines of R, SQL, and Python code
*Political stickers on computer, car, and reusable water bottle
*
==Activities== 
*Reading various newspapers daily. You don't have to do it every day; Monday-Thursday in the after 5PM ET is when the most relevant headlines come out. Spend Friday-Sunday reading editorials/opinion articles and research papers, and re-reading important sections and chapters of books in your library.
*Reading books from the university press and academic authors.
*Overexerting yourself debunking common lies & myths that professional academia feels to busy and/or arrogant for. However if you don't take care of that, you won't be able to discuss theory with the inner-circle. Make sure you create a "Frequent Refutations" page in your OneNote or something with your citation-intensive arguments to copy & paste into you Reddit replies. When all conventional outlets like traditional academia fail to yield sufficient answers, just ask a Black woman on TikTok (much better yet ask them first). Be sure to regularly sync your OneNote annotations regularly so you'll have your expansive arguments ready to copy/paste from mobile & desktop.
*Watching history, TED talk, and "the hidden meaning/symbols of X movie/TV show" videos on YouTube
*Making satirical, easily digestible memes. A picture is worth a thousand words, and we need them because social scientists have a reputation for making long jargonous sentences. All you need to make memes are Snapchat, Instagram, IMGflip.com, as well as knowledge of when to delpoy them- see KnowYourMeme.com.
*Ranting and educating people on TikTok
*Playing chess and tennis
*Visiting museums, libraries, bookshops, and cafés
*Taking walks
*Organizing communities and attending protests
*Coding in R, SQL, and Python. When you're dealing with many thousands of data points, these programming languages are a NEED, whether you're doing qualitative OR quantitative research
*Learning several languages. Duolingo and LingQ help with 1/2 of it, but having Disney + helps us with listening
==Authors==
*Niccolò Machiavelli
*Karl Marx
*Fredrich Engels
*W.E. B. DuBois
*Alexis de Tocqueville
*Adam Smith
*David Ricardo
*Max Weber
* Emile Durkheim
*Margaret Mead
*Noam Chomsky
*Michael Parenti
*Gerald Horne
*Karl Polanyi
*Michel Foucault
*Paul Sweezy
*Paul Baran
*Slojav Zizek
*David Harvey
* Michael Hudson
*Theodore Adorno
*Max Horkheimer
*Wilhelm Reich
*Sigmund Freud
* Phillip Zimbardo
*David Graber
*Paul Cockshott
*Adam Tooze
*Eric Hobsbawm
*bell hooks (she intentionally lowercases to her formal name)
*Ferdinand Braudel
*Charles Tilly
*John Kenneth Gallabraith
*C. Wright Mills
*Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz
*Frantz Fanon
*Immanuel Wallerstein
*Rosa Luxemburg
*Chris Hedges
*David Hackett Fischer
*Arnold Toynbee
* Arlie Hochschild
*Robert Reich
*Richard D. Wolff
==Media==
=== Communities ===
* TikTok
* Sub Stack 
* Medium
* Reddit - Though there are listed are where you're most likely to get a reply for posts, as well as directly talk about theory and field updates. Subreddits like r/sociology or r/academia are defunct or only care to answer concerns about technicalities of grant submissions or switching majors.
** Anthropology
** Economy
===YouTube===
*TED-Ed
*WiseCrack
*School of Life
*The Take
*Dr. Todd Grande
*Democracy at Work
*Breakthrough News
*Real News Network
*StepBack History
*History Matters
*Knowledge Husk
*New Economic Thinking
*Unlearning Economics
===Fiction Authors===
* George Orwell
* Margret Atwood
*Aldous Huxley
*Franz Kafka
* Upton Sinclair
=== TV Shows===
*Handmaid's Tale (Hulu)
*3% (Netflix)
*Squid Games (Netflix)
===Movies===
*The Platform (Netflix)
*Snowpiercer
*Bladerunner
*Hunger Games
*The Thinning (YouTube)
*
==Fashion==
===Male Attire===
For most of social science's existance, in the professional ranks, have largely derived from 19th century mensware to the Dark Academia aesthetic. Even psychologists don't usually dawn the lab coat. They stereotypical [male] psychology or economics professor wore khakis, an elbow-pad tweed jacket, and sometimes a scarf.
Category:Academia