The essays gathered in this debut (I, 1, Spring 2002) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge were written by undergraduate students enrolled in various sociology courses offered at SUNY-Binghamton and SUNY-Oneonta. the issue also includes the editor's paper on K. Mannheim, where the idea of a sociology of self-knowledge was born. What these courses shared was their common use of the sociology of self-knowledge as a strategy for learning about their respective subject matters. Each course required students to engage throughout the semester in an ongoing self-exploratory sociological research focusing on a specific unresolved issue, problem, or question still facing their everyday lives. They were required to link their self-explorations to the study of society at large through various course and outside readings and films studied in class throughout the semester. Topics were: "The Capitalist Cuckoo's Nest," "I only Thought I Knew It All: Society and the Individual," "Why Is P Afraid to Love a Woman?," "Teacher Recruitment and Retention: Personal Conflicts, Social Dilemmas," ""Alien Nation,"" "Good Mother/Daughter Hunting: A Process of Self-Healing," "For the Love of Our Many Lives," "Banana or Bridge? How Capitalism Impacts My Racial Identity," "My Asian-American Experience," "Welfare Beyond Teaching: Caring for Children and Their Parents," "The Disabled Welfare Program: The Welfare System and the Disabled," "Inadequate Programs Assisting Mothers in Poverty," "Children: The Unheard Society," and "Ideology and Utopia in Mannheim: Towards the Sociology of Self-Knowledge." Contributors include: R.F.A., Samara Cohen, Peter Dai, P. E. Gracey III, P. Heim, L. Mlecz, S. R., YuhTyng Tsuei, William Wang, Jan Michele Chilion, Erin Syron, Jessica Udice, Aaron Witkowski, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal's Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR's homepage.
Tamdgidi, Mohammad H.: - Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, a retired associate professor of sociology at UMass Boston, has also taught sociology at SUNY-Oneonta and SUNY-Binghamton. He holds doctoral and masters degrees in sociology in conjunction with a graduate certificate in Middle Eastern studies from Binghamton University (SUNY) and a B.A. in architecture from U.C. Berkeley. He is the founding editor of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics) which has served since 2002 to frame his research, teaching, and publishing initiatives. Tamdgidi specializes in the sociology of self-knowledge, human architecture, and utopystics-three overlapping theoretical, methodological and applied fields of inquiry he initiated in his doctoral studies in 2002 and has since pursued. His research, teaching, and publishing practices have been framed by an interest in understanding how personal self-knowledges of multiple selves and singular world-historical social structures constitute one another. This line of inquiry has itself been a result of his long-standing interest in understanding the contributions and the underlying causes of failure of the world's utopian, mystical, and scientific traditions in bringing about a just global society.
