themurmuration

a podcast about sociology

Murmuration (noun)

1 Flight pattern of starlings characterized by spontaneous complex patterns.

2 Emergent behavioral property ie “individuals-as-a-group” not “in-a-group”.

3 Metaphor for society.

Daniel Newell McLane is a sociologist and educator based in upstate New York. He started his study of sociology because the discipline allowed him to answer questions about human behavior in a way that other sciences had not.

As an undergraduate he attended four schools in four years, including studying field ecology in Botswana.

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Portrait of a smiling man with short blonde hair wearing a black shirt against a dark background.

He has been employed as a factory worker, a waiter, a bartender, an AmeriCorps volunteer, an organic farmer on a CSA, a translator of trail guides at a rainforest preserve in Costa Rica, and singer for a rock band.

He obtained graduate degrees in international affairs and natural resources and sustainable development before finding sociology, in which he earned his PhD.