I started this post as a one-sentence note about a future field called “sociology of space”. The idea came while I was reading this BBC article on some of the problems encountered the crew of a spaceship going to Mars. The article… Read More ›
Articles 
Sociology of procrastination
I want to write about the sociology of procrastination… perhaps tomorrow. Joke aside, here are a few useful resources for those procrastinators among our readers who would like to acquire some robust theoretical and empirical knowledge about this fascinating phenomenon…. Read More ›
Is America the New ‘Old Country’?
The great journalist Walter Lippmann famously defined the twentieth century as the ‘American Century’. In 2012 the twentieth century is history: We’ve been there, done that. Now, it seems, America is the Old Country. The idea of countries being ‘old’… Read More ›
The best of @ProfSteveFuller on Sociological Imagination
“The best of @ProfSteveFuller on Sociological Imagination” on Bundlr
Top Ten Tips: Preparing to Publish
There’s a ton of advice out there for PhD students and ECRs on getting published, from choosing a journal to improving your academic writing. Here are my top tips for useful things to do BEFORE you start writing; so if… Read More ›
Experience with MOOCs – Week One
There’s been a fair amount of interest in the rise of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses – in the HE ether recently, debating whether such online courses – where thousands of students can register, and participate via video lectures and… Read More ›
The simplest (and most effective?) campaign ad ever
Given the postmodernist panache which has characterised Barack Obama’s ascent to the summit of US politics (not to mention the terrifying amounts of money which have gone into this most recent contest already) there seems something curious, anachronistic even, about the uncomplicated nature of… Read More ›
Free Agent Nation OR what precarity looks like for the winners
Daniel Pink, author of Free Agent Nation, makes being a ‘free agent’ sound pretty great. But then as a former political insider at the heart of the Democratic machine in the 90s and more latterly a business guru and best… Read More ›
Towards Digital Sociology: an interview with Deborah Lupton
To start the interview, could you say a little about how you came to be so professionally active online? It was a combination of factors, some going back a long time, some more recent. I have been interested in the… Read More ›
Twitter for academics
What’s the point of Twitter? Twitter has an image problem. It first penetrated the public consciousness in a way which has left it defined by celebrities and, particularly for academics, this is unattractive. However the academic twittersphere (for lack of a better… Read More ›
Accidental sociologists
Today I stumbled across an interesting biographical account by Sarah Burton, sociology postgraduate researcher, entitled The Accidental Sociologist. Sarah writes that she – as, it seems, a great many other sociologists – ended up in sociology ‘by chance’. She wonders… Read More ›
Internet Social Media Addiction: 20 Symptoms?
We all make so many excuses for spending so much time online. For many people this is not a cause for anxiety at all. We are increasingly cyborgian, and any wish to return to the old ways (3-5 years ago)… Read More ›
Why sexual people don’t get asexuality and why it matters
I had three initial aims with my asexuality research: mapping out community in a ideographically adequate way, understanding the role the internet played in the formation of the community and exploring what the reception of asexuality reveals about sexual culture…. Read More ›
A guide to curation tools for researchers
Do you suffer from information overload? Do you find it difficult to organise and process the things you find online so that you can apply them productively in your day-to-day working life? If so then curation tools could transform your experience of… Read More ›
Get on the way, Pussy Riot!
This article was originally posted on the MYPLACE blog. The MYPLACE blog first reported on ”Pussy Riot’s” anti-Putin punk prayer protest, in March. Now, as 3 members of the group have been sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for “hooliganism,” the University of Warwick’s Dr Ivan Gololobov writes on… Read More ›
If your bottom line as an academic is that the world is a complicated and uncertain place, then expect job replacement by a smart search engine
Case in point: A bad analogy between UK Olympic funding and UK science policy funding. Clearly the author hasn’t thought through the idea that in a neo-liberal political economy, targets make all the difference – and the Olympics provided those,… Read More ›
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing(?): On Being a Not So Dumb Blonde
Since returning northwards, and knowing that it would only be temporary, I’ve made the decision to try and get out into the Northumberland countryside as much as possible. It’s not going well, largely owing to my reluctance to leave my… Read More ›
Paths in the fog – Milan Kundera and Zygmunt Bauman
Norbert Elias writes, I think in his book What is Sociology, that it is only with hindsight that we can see that A led to B to C and so on because the contingency and uncertainty of how myriad actions and consequences, intended and unintended,… Read More ›
The Counterfeiters (part 2)
Too much for sale? The myth of Europe is a Greek invention and so is tragedy and drama. What follows, amounts to no more than dramaturgical field-notes from the country’s trials, tribulations as well as its responsibilities and duties, not… Read More ›
Pussy Riot – the End is Coming
The MYPLACE research team at HSE St Petersburg in Russia send this blog on the latest developments following “Pussy Riot’s” imprisonment for their punk protest. This was originally posted on the MYPLACE blog and you can also follow the project on Twitter. For more information… Read More ›
Wanted: Ph.D. student to put Harriet Martineau back in the sociological canon
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was one of the most remarkable women of letters – perhaps ever. Her body of work ranged across the social and biological sciences and even theology. Wikipedia gives a good introduction to the breadth of her writing…. Read More ›
What Oprah’s Research Staff Failed To Inform Her About India
Note: This list was written as a quick response to Oprah Winfrey’s visit to and report on South Asia in the Summer of 2012. 1) Yes, it is customary in (most parts) of South Asia for people to eat with… Read More ›
Towards a Comtean Revival in Sociology
I have been closely associated with the field of science and technology studies (STS) since my graduate student days, nearly thirty years ago. In 1984, as a PhD student in history and philosophy of science, I published the first piece… Read More ›