After he became heralded as one of the greatest pianists to ever play, Glenn Gould stopped performing live. Doing so just didn’t allow him to perfect the way he wanted to play like performing in a studio did, where he… Read More ›
Archive for July 2011
Call for Papers: what does the Sociological Imagination mean today?
It has been over 50 years since C. Wright Mills wrote the Sociological Imagination. In that time the world has changed beyond recognition: the Cold War ended, the Keynesian consensus broke down, a globalizing neoliberalism rose to the ascendancy and… Read More ›
Call for BSA Regional Postgraduate Day Event Proposals 2011/12
The British Sociological Association is requesting expressions of interest from postgraduate students interested in organising a regional postgraduate day event in 2011-12. In 2010-11, eight successful events were held throughout the UK. These one-day events express the diversity and dynamism… Read More ›
‘The Places We live’: urban photography by Jonas Bendigsen
Visual methods are a great part of research into the mundane, and the area where visual sociology and investigative photography are at their best (and hardest to tell apart). The work of Norwegian photographer Jonas Bendiksen is a perfect example of such… Read More ›
“It has happened to me”: the untold and unheard stories of male rape
“Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s.” No one talks of male rape – yet it happens – as an instrument of war, as well as outside war. Yet this systemical silence does nothing to… Read More ›
Null Set
IHAVENOIDEAWHATYOUARETALKINGABOUT D : (via Ache)
Call for BSA Regional Postgraduate Day Event Proposals 2011/12
The British Sociological Association is requesting expressions of interest from postgraduate students interested in organising a regional postgraduate day event in 2011-12. In 2010-11, eight successful events were held throughout the UK. These one-day events express the diversity and dynamism… Read More ›
Where Children Sleep
Photographer James Mollison did a stunning exhibition, James and Other Apes, at the Herbert gallery in Coventry last year. He has also photographed rock fans to demonstrate the idea that music fandom creates a quasi-familial community. His newest project is an… Read More ›
Where New York Stops & Bombay Starts
Note: I went looking for Bombay in New York City last night inspired by Bombay V. New York, a brilliant on-going photo essay by Nisha Sondhe. An earlier It’s Not Rocket Science post on India is right here.
A sociological blog dedicated to ‘Humanity 2.0’
Recently a videoclip of me giving one of the first TEDx lectures at Warwick was posted here on ‘Humanity 2.0’, which is about changing definitions of the human, an issue central to the past, present and future of the social… Read More ›
Review of Chavs and The Precariat
Among those who understand social classes as things it is acknowledged that they have changed. As Guy Standing explains this change, ‘globalisation has resulted in a fragmentation of national class structures’ (p.7). Whereas Owen Jones sees change imposed by a… Read More ›
Add SI on Twitter and Facebook
This is a reminder that the Sociological Imagination has a presence on facebook. Please do add us as a friend and feel free to get in contact. We’re always open to ideas and suggestions so please don’t hesitate if there’s… Read More ›
Paradise At Home
Dear Dr. Sprenger, Thank you so much for your article Home Goings on The Sociological Imagination. As a sociologist who left her home in West Virginia many years ago, I have always carried the feeling of being misplaced or unsettled…. Read More ›
The Disruptive Power of Social Media
Lectures about marketing aren’t going to be a regular feature on SI (promise!) but this one is fascinating:
From learning to earning – the changing ethos of English Higher Education
The publication of the White Paper on Higher Education emphatically entitled ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ opens the doors to one of the most radical transformations in the UK education system. The perverse and socially destructive potential of… Read More ›
Home Goings
So entrenched in our most intimate yearnings, home often seems as if it were some universal truth, like it says in all those sayings, home is where the heart is, home is where you hang your hat, you would be… Read More ›
Choice!
In this instalment of the wonderful RSA Animate series, Renata Salecl talks about the dynamics of choice in modern societies. The Idle Ethnographer talked about this a few months ago and it’s a fascinating issue – the structural, cultural and personal aspects of choosing… Read More ›
The art of lost places: photographs by by Axel Hansmann
The Idle Ethnographer fell in love with these photos and has nothing more to say. This is not yet sociology – but it is certainly food for hungry proto-sociological imaginations. Just wanted to share them – click on this link… Read More ›
Call for Papers: what does the Sociological Imagination mean today?
It has been over 50 years since C. Wright Mills wrote the Sociological Imagination. In that time the world has changed beyond recognition: the Cold War ended, the Keynesian consensus broke down, a globalizing neoliberalism rose to the ascendancy and… Read More ›
Review of ‘Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism’ by Sarah Sobieraj
In her introduction to Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism (NYU Press, 2011), sociologist and Tufts University professor writes, ‘I thought this would be a book about how activist groups use presidential elections as moments of political opening, but… Read More ›
The real naked bodies
In this video, Jennette Williams, winner of the 2008 CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography, tells the story of making the photographs in her book “The Bathers,”. Jennette Williams: “The Bathers” from Center for Documentary Studies on Vimeo.
The Opposite of Crush
Once, in my Introductory Sociology course, I gave a lecture about social oppression. It was fairly abstract. I didn’t talk about any specific kind of social oppression, like gender oppression or racial oppression or sexual oppression. I just talked about… Read More ›
Add SI on Facebook and Twitter!
This is a reminder that the Sociological Imagination has a presence on facebook. Please do add us as a friend and feel free to get in contact. We’re always open to ideas and suggestions so please don’t hesitate if there’s… Read More ›
Franz Kafka International Airport
A couple of weeks ago I was due to fly home from Florence to London. Even including the journey back from Stanstead, this should have taken four hours at most. Instead it took almost two days. The first flight was… Read More ›
Autonomy of the person from the state: ‘pastafarian’ wins historic battle
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has won a small battle for religious tolerance and freedom of appearance in the face (or, rather, head), of Niko Alm, a devout Austrian pastafarian, who was recently granted the right to appear… Read More ›
Responses to the White Paper on Education in England
A few days ago, the UK government publicised the new White Paper on Higher Education in England. (click on the title or on the image below to read the White Paper). … Read More ›
VF #3 WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR OUR FUTURE?
The famous cyber-punk author, Pat Cadigan, was one of the speakers at the original Virtual Futures conference in 1994. At the 2011 conference she returned as a keynote speaker and addressed a range of the themes which link the original… Read More ›
Living Above The Martinis
For a year I lived above a pizza parlor, just like the sociologist William Foote Whyte did in 1936, the year he was doing field research for what would later become his famous urban ethnography, Street Corner Society. And every… Read More ›
VF #2 – STELARC: THE BODY AND THE ARTIST
Stelarc is a performance artist quite unlike any other. Witness his third ear in the picture above. Take a look at his website for further examples of his work. His keynote at the conference was, for lack of a better… Read More ›
VF #1 – Mark Fisher on Communications and Late Capitalism
In this keynote from Virtual Futures, Mark Fisher, author of the stunning Capitalist Realism, talks about the role which innovations in communicative technology play in the unfolding of late capitalism. He talks about the growing ‘digital communicative malaise’ which can be… Read More ›