The notion of relational authoriality, which consistency demands I acknowledge emerged in conversations with Jana Bacevic, conveys a relational realist perspective on the question of authorship. It rejects the notion of the liberal individual as the origin of a text… Read More ›
Sociological Craft 
This project will explore all aspects of sociological craft. Call(s) for contributions coming soon!
The transformation of academic writing and the challenge of ephemera
What does social media mean for academic writing? Most answers to this question focus on how such platforms might constrain or enable the expression of complex ideas. For instance, we might encounter scepticism that one could express conceptual nuance in 140 characters… Read More ›
An Interview with Patricia Leavy about Research Design in Contemporary Times
Your main areas of interest are research methodology and public scholarship. How did you become interested in these topics and how, if at all, do you think they’re linked? When I was a sophomore in college I took a required… Read More ›
The Reflexive Researcher: The Pain and Gains of Reflexivity
By Meenakshi Sarkar Recently, the British Sociological Association organised a postgraduate and early career researcher regional event – Public sociology and the role of the researcher: Engagement, communication and academic activism on 29th March 2017, at the DeMontfort University, Leicester. The… Read More ›
Digital Scholarship and Why It Matters
In a world where so many aspects of our lives are becoming increasingly digital, it is not surprising that academia has also been influenced. University of Canberra Centenary Research Professors Patrick Dunleavy and Deborah Lupton join Swinburne University of Technology’s… Read More ›
“Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens”
This is the fifth of Walter Benjamin’s thirteen rules for writing. I would love to know more about what this meant in practice to him. How often did he record his ideas? Where did he record them? How did their… Read More ›
Do academics write badly because they’re rushing?
I saw the science journalist Simon Makin give an excellent talk yesterday on how social and natural scientists can make their writing clearer. He offered some excellent tips to this end, including assuming your reader is exactly as intelligent as you are, but has absolutely none… Read More ›
The Technology of Intellectual Work
In 1988 Pierre Bourdieu chaired a commission reviewing the curriculum at the behest of the minister of national education. The scope of the review was broad, encompassing a revision of subjects taught in order to strengthen the coherence and unity… Read More ›
Social media didn’t create the ambition to rethink scholarly communication, it gave us the tools to do it effectively
When we talk about the possibilities which social media offer for rethinking scholarly communication, it’s easy to slip into the trap of thinking this ambition is a new one. We counterpoise the ‘new’ and the ‘old’, the innovative and the traditional, the digital… Read More ›
Writing prompts for a PhD journal
Embed from Getty Images I’m a big advocate of the research journal as a key part of doing a PhD. I think blogs are wonderful for this but I realise this might not be for everyone. The important thing is… Read More ›
Steve Fuller’s Guide for Teaching Social Theory
January seems to bring out the social theorist in me. My last direct contribution to this topic was around this time last year, when a conversation with a graduate student at Warwick inspired me to propose a guide to reading… Read More ›
On Academic Productivity
Some great ideas about academic productivity offered by Fabio Rojas at OrgTheory, based on conversations he has had with ultra-productive academics. Read it in full here: Team work: Almost every star I’ve asked works in large groups. If you look… Read More ›
The challenge of writing in the accelerated academy
In the nine years since I first entered a Sociology department, I’ve had a deep interest in academic writing that has only increased with time. In my past life as a philosophy student, writing had never occurred to me as… Read More ›
Graphic ethnography
This is not news, but I found it recently, while playing around with some watercolours in my office, and thought it was exciting that someone had thought of it before me. Graphic ethnography! http://www.utpteachingculture.com/announcing-ethnographic-a-new-series/
Against the notion of ‘craft’: thoughts on the cultural politics of romanticising exploitation
On pg 106 of their Rethinking Social Exclusion: The End of the Social? Simon Winlow and Steve Hall describe the changing realities of work, as more and more jobs become “non-unionised, low paid, short-term, insecure and part time”: We should… Read More ›
Ethnography as being-in-the-world rather than method
A fascinating discussion by Matthew Desmond in the conclusion of his wonderful book Evicted: There’s this idea that ethnography is a “method.” When we see it this way, we tend to ask methodological questions about it. How do I get… Read More ›
Mike Featherstone’s unpublished MA thesis on Ecology and the Chicago School
Roger Burrows shared this link to Mike Featherstone’s unpublished MA thesis a few weeks ago. It really is an incredible piece of work: The development of human ecology is closely associated with the rise of empirical sociological research in the United… Read More ›
Eliminating the first person from ethnography
A powerful argument by Matthew Desmond from the conclusion of his incredible book Evicted. What do you think? Far from being a prerequisite for reflexivity, can writing the “I” into ethnography inadvertently make the text about the author rather than the… Read More ›
Request for Zines
WHAT IS A ZINE? “Zine” is short for fanzine. “For all intensive purposes, a zine is a cheaply-made, cheaply-priced publication, often in black and white, which is mass-produced via photocopier and bound with staples. Most zines revolve around a… Read More ›
Max Weber’s triad – status, class and party – in light of Brexit: A call to party harder
Max Weber famously presented three principles of social ‘stratification’ (‘organization’ would be better): status, class and party. The ongoing saga of Brexit brings to light some interesting features of the last category, which otherwise tends to be neglected or treated… Read More ›
An Interview with Sociologist Patricia Leavy
An Interview with Sociologist Patricia Leavy on the Release of her 20th book and The Rewards of Writing Social Fiction Ashleigh Watson: Patricia, you’re a best-selling author and award-winning arts-based researcher, you’ve had a remarkable career in sociology and gender… Read More ›
Are Politicians Liars? Taking a Step Back from Brexit
Among the most striking features of the aftermath of the Brexit vote has been the speed with which the victorious politicians promoting Brexit have rowed back from their more extravagant promises about the extra funds and fewer migrants which would… Read More ›
The Emerging Lessons of Brexit for Aspiring Democracies
The following first appeared on Al Rasub, a Dubai-based news website. *** The recent referendum resulting in a 52-48 vote for the UK to leave the European Union (‘Brexit’) is causing substantial political and economic ripple effects across the world,… Read More ›
Brexit Shows That ‘Generation’ Needs to Be Added to Race, Class and Gender
Shortly after it was announced that those in favour of leaving the European Union had won the UK referendum, I was among the first to pounce on the fact that attachment to the European Union directly varied with age cohort:… Read More ›
RIP Alvin Toffler, sociologist of the future
I first read Alvin Toffler’s books Future Shock (1970), The Third Wave (1980) and Powershift” (1990), the last two co-authored with his wife Heidy Toffler, in an samizdat-type Bulgarian translation in 2000, as a first year student at the Sofia University…. Read More ›
Let’s cut the bullshit!
I study the work of mathematicians. I don’t call them informants but participants, because “informants” is a horrible word. Some of my participants enjoy being part of the research and take pains to explain and verbalise stuff to make it… Read More ›
Sociology and Fiction: a @thesocreview Special Feature
I think this is come out really well. Get in touch if you’d like to contribute something further: Imagining Futures: From Sociology of the Future to Future Fictions The Future Perfect Writing Fiction and Writing Social Science Life Chances: Co-written… Read More ›
Using fiction as a resource for social theorising
I was a bit hesitant when preparing this talk because of the risk that I just end up talking about a couple of novels that I really liked and explaining why I liked them. So I won’t actually say all that much… Read More ›
Using social media to ‘inhabit the attentiveness of another writer’
There’s a lovely reflection in Les Back’s Academic Diary, released soon by Goldsmiths Press, concerning the role of Twitter in academic life. He suggests that Twitter sometimes facilitates our “inhabiting the attentiveness of another writer” by providing “signposts pointing to… Read More ›
Writing praxes beyond papers and books
A really fascinating reflection by Rob Kitchin on ten forms of academic writing beyond scholarly papers and books: fiction, blog posts, newspaper op eds, email correspondence, policy papers, policy consultation, a television documentary script, powerpoint slides, academic papers, and grant application…. Read More ›