We think all the time about individuals and what’s inside their heads. We think surprisingly little about what’s around them.

My name is James Cook. For nearly three decades I centered my work life around the role of a professor of sociology, first at the forest-secluded, private and elite Duke University, then at the access-oriented University of Maine at Augusta. While the former was more far more resourced and connected to centers of power, I found much work at the latter to be much more fulfilling for its community connection.

Being a sociologist involves a unique way of seeing reality: not as a set of isolated individuals but as a web of contexts set by relationships, affiliations, and institutions. The sociological viewpoint is atypical in the American cultural context, but in terms of impact, that distinctiveness is a strength, opening up a way of seeing that often leads to fruitful insights.

My research expertise includes qualitative and quantitative research methodology, the connection between theory and empirical observation, the role of connections in politics, civic and community organization, social media research, social network analysis, and the role of gender as identity and a system of stratification.

As a practitioner and teacher of research method, I have cultivated skill in a variety of quantitative and qualitative analytical approaches of data not only to inform my own individual work in peer-reviewed publication, institutional research, and action research to meet community needs, but also to better enable me to teach research methods to students across 6 methodological courses and 15 substantively oriented courses. One of the essential insights I seek to deliver when mentoring new researchers is the importance of connecting research questions and theoretical models of the world to clearly operationalized systems for observing the world that reflect abstract ideas in practice.

In addition to these professional experiences in an academic setting, I have worked toward to community engagement outside campus boundaries of a campus, using sociological insight to strengthen community and build leadership in community gardens, performing arts groups, policy and advocacy work, non-profit leadership, and the carceral setting of the Maine State Prison. Sociology in an academic setting alone is abstract; real sociology lies in community practice.