By Hamish Robertson Introduction This is the final piece in this series for The Sociological Imagination and it comes full circle by focusing on one of the most obvious, even foundational, ‘factories’ of knowledge – the library. More specifically, the… Read More ›
Rethinking The World 
Rethinking The World is a new regular column by Prakash Kona
The Problem of Order on Planes
From pg 24 of Zeynep Tufekci’s Twitter and Teargas: You could not, for example, squeeze more than a hundred chimpanzees into a thin metal tube, sitting knee-to-knee and shoulder-to-shoulder in cramped quarters, close the door, hurl the tube across the sky at… Read More ›
Denaturalising digital capitalism
One of the most pressing issues we confront when analysing the digital economy is a pronounced tendency towards oligopoly which makes a lie of an earlier generation’s utopian embrace of the Internet as a sphere of free competition and a… Read More ›
The Swedish Theory of Love
An interesting extract from Swedish documentary The Swedish Theory of Love.
Ten Theses on Liberalism
When I was first exposed to liberalism as a political philosophy, I was told that its founders were Spinoza and Locke, two thinkers who have always struck me as having rather little in common, except some common foes — especially… Read More ›
A Modest Proposal to Raise the Academic Game: The Google Test
I’ve always been a big supporter of bursaries to ‘English’ (understood as a transitive verb) the dissertations of students for whom English is a second language. These students often have interesting things to say and deserve to have their ideas… Read More ›
How Democracy Can Generate Progressive Collective Intelligence in Two Steps
First, citizens don’t vote for a representative simply based on who they judge as best matching their interests, but rather on who they judge as best matching their interests given the candidate’s chances of winning in the election. Second, the… Read More ›
The fortress city scenario
A disturbing scenario from John Urry’s What is the Future? From loc : The final scenario involves the development of the Fortress City. Rich societies break away from the poorer into fortified enclaves. Those able to live in gated and… Read More ›
Snapping out of Brexit: An invitation to Sociological Citizenship
As the June 8 snap election approaches and variations on the theme of Brexit creep into competing party pledges, a breath-catching pause that allows us to figure out what Brexit really is, how we have reacted to it so far,… Read More ›
What will Macron be like in government?
I happened to be reading this page of Yanis Varoufakis’ political memoir a few moments before Macron’s near certain victory was announced. From loc 3398: Emmanuel Macron listened actively and engaged directly, his eyes radiant and ready to display his… Read More ›
The Liberated Mathematician Stands Up to Gender and Race Inequality in Academia
This week, Dr. Piper Harron, mathematics professor based at the University of Hawaii, and a vocal feminist and supporter of under-represented groups in the academic mathematics community, published a provocative blogpost on the website of the AMS (American Mathematical Society), in… Read More ›
Darwin’s Dilemma
• Science is the epitome of human achievement, whereby we distinguish ourselves most clearly from other animals. • Yet, our best science says that our sense of superiority from other animals is false and quite possibly self-deception. • Either we… Read More ›
Conservatism eats itself: An irreverent look at the conservative mind by Deborah Talbot
by Deborah Talbot Conservative politics are everywhere, but what is it, and what are they really like? In the cities, you don’t notice conservatism. It’s there, for sure, but is pretty quiet about itself. Political parties of a more left… Read More ›
A Nobel Peace Prize for Sublimation
I originally wrote the following in October 2012, just after the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union makes the most sense when you consider the front-runners, which included Julian… Read More ›
Reclaiming Utopia
Reclaiming Utopia Challenging the Financial Imagination November 25, 2016 at King’s College London. It was organized by Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou with the support of King’s College London’s Doctoral Training Centre and Utopia 2016, a collaboration with Somerset House and the Courtauld… Read More ›
What is ‘Post-Truth’? What Can We Do About It?
An interesting panel run by Sage.
Beautiful new words to describe obscure emotions
A fabulous talk about a subject that has always fascinated me. Perhaps there should be a word for the pleasure that comes from remembering that not all TED talks are overhyped nonsense? There’s much more here on The Dictionary of… Read More ›
Engines of Knowledge in the First Information Age: The Laboratory and the Experiment
by Hamish Robertson This series of pieces has focused on the concept of exploring a number of ‘engines of knowledge’ that emerged in the first ‘big data’ information age of the 19th century, which have since gradually institutionalised themselves into… Read More ›
Creative Dark Matter Rising? Struggling Over the Future of Alternative Cultural Spaces in the City of Geneva
by Robert Hollands When I recently mentioned to some friends that I was going to Geneva, Switzerland to conduct some sociological research into alternative cultural spaces, most shook their heads in disbelief. ‘All I think of when I hear the… Read More ›
A Bleak Social Theory For Bleak Times
Given the number of times I’ve argued with him on Twitter, it was a surprise to discover quite how much I like Steve Hall’s work. There’s an unapologetic bleakness to it which I find appealing, not as a matter of aesthetics but rather… Read More ›
Was Sloterdijk an early originator of contemporary right populism?
Reading the excellent Selected Exaggerations, a book of interviews with Peter Sloterdijk, I was struck by his remarks about taxation and the state in an interview from 2001. He bemoans the punitive taxation he claims exists in Germany, arguing that it reflects a… Read More ›
An interview with Jamie Woodcock about Working the Phones
Find out more about the book here How did call centre emerge and proliferate? Would it be a mistake to see this as solely a matter of technological feasibility? The growth of call centres in the UK is a result… Read More ›
BREAKING NEWS: Social Science Faculty at Humboldt-University Berlin occupied!
Well, this is not breaking news. The occupation of the Social Science Faculty of the HU-Berlin started last Wednesday, 18 January, but I only found out about it today. Although I work in an institute which is part of the… Read More ›
Engines of Knowledge: The Museum and the Exhibit
by Hamish Robertson This was originally posted on Discover Society My focus is on what I have termed, after Ian Hacking’s idea, engines of knowledge. This notion of engines includes not just tools and methods but institutions and processes that we… Read More ›
The Happy Unemployment of Horses
Embed from Getty Images From Peter Sloterdick’s Selected Exaggerations, loc Incidentally, there are almost as many horses today as there were in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, but they have all been reassigned. They are almost all leisure horses,… Read More ›
Ford Motor Company Sociological Department & English School
Thanks to Hamish Robertson for pointing out this fascinating resource: With the success of the Ford Model T after its introduction in 1908, Ford Motor Company became the leading manufacturer of automobiles in the world. By 1914, the integration of… Read More ›
China’s Millionaire Migration
An interesting documentary about the migration of wealthy Chinese to Vancouver:
Is democracy incoherent?
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