In this article, Kristen Howerton unveils some of the secrets behind Haloween treats (and other chocolate). What happens in the modern globalised world is that the products that we consume often have extremely long ‘trails’ about which the ordinary consumer… Read More ›
For all professional and/or novice visual researchers out there: the Sociological Imagination is pleased to announce its new column dedicated to “Visual Research”. To celebrate its beginning, we are launching a continuous call for reader submissions. The call is open… Read More ›
In March 2012 it will be 50 years since C. Wright Mills died. To mark the occasion Sociological Imagination will be convening a one-day conference, live streamed over the internet, exploring the meaning of the sociological imagination in the 21st… Read More ›
In this video John Holmwood gives a great overview of how classical pragmatist philosophy has been taken up and put to use within Sociology, as well as the practical issues it engages with in the process of being used to… Read More ›
In quantitative empirical research, what makes a survey good? Well, not perfect, but optimally good – that is, its questions ask exactly what we want them to ask, and the response rate is as high as possible? There are no… Read More ›
Italian photographer and photojournalist Ruben Salvadori has done an excellent ethnographic study on the staging of action photos in East Jerusalem. Watch the video (in Italian with English subtitles) here . This will change the way in which you view photos… Read More ›
Do you ever get talker’s block? No, we don’t either. This entirely obvious and largely ignored state of affairs is perhaps more significant than you might think. In a recent article the marketing guru Seth Godin makes a rather plausible… Read More ›
In March 2012 it will be 50 years since C. Wright Mills died. To mark the occasion Sociological Imagination will be convening a one-day conference, live streamed over the internet, exploring the meaning of the sociological imagination in the 21st… Read More ›
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 ›
An utterly fascinating video flagged up on the Guardian website of a recorded experiment with LSD in 1956. An ‘ordinary woman’ is given the drug and her response is filmed. Skip to 1 min 50 secs for footage of her… Read More ›
It’s been almost a year of half since we started Sociological Imagination and given how many posts we’ve done since then, we thought it was a good idea to round up the ones that proved most popular. Here’s the top… Read More ›
Granny Smith’ is the name given by postmen to the isolated old ladies along their routes for whom the mail service is a lifeline. Dear Granny Smith takes the form of a letter to such women, attempting to explain what has… Read More ›
In this essay, Wolfgang Streeck, recounts an experience of being at an international social science conference a few years where Michael Burawoy issued his famous call for ‘public sociology‘. Streeck recalls being struck by the paradoxical situation faced by sociologists… Read More ›
This is Part One of an unscripted talk presented by Steve Fuller (in his office at the University of Warwick, UK, in September 2011) as a ‘Festvideo’ (cf. Festschrift) in honour of Eugene Rosa of Washington State University, one of… Read More ›
In March 2012 it will be 50 years since C. Wright Mills died. To mark the occasion Sociological Imagination will be convening a one-day conference, live streamed over the internet, exploring the meaning of the sociological imagination in the 21st… Read More ›
The name Mills gave to this promise was the sociological imagination, defined as that “quality of mind essential to comprehend the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and the world”. The sociological imagination offered the… Read More ›
Here’s some amazing work from photographer Rion Sabean: men-ups! What the series does is self-explanatory and yet simultaneously profound. Any readers teaching Judith Butler this year? If so this gallery of images might come in handy.
Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room was a critically acclaimed 2005 documentary film based on a book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. They tell the story of how a whole range of suspect corporate practices… Read More ›
When Pete Seeger was sociology major at Harvard University, Thomas and Znaneicki’s The Polish Peasant had been published but Talcott Parson’s The Social System had not. Parsons was on the faculty, however, and so was Robert Merton, though they weren’t… Read More ›
Given that I’m two months away from being contractually obliged to submit my first solo edited collection to the publisher, this is a rather depressing question. But it’s difficult not to ask it. If my only other experience of editing… Read More ›
(via AyeshaKazmi from the Occupy Boston protest)
In this podcast Mark Carrigan talks to Katherine Davies, a researcher in the Morgan Centre at Manchester University, about her work on sibling relationships and personal identity. Despite the obviously somewhat common experience of sibling relationships, it’s an area that has largely been… Read More ›
In an article over the summer Julian Astle, former director of liberal think tank Centre Forum, suggested that the UK had been governed for much of the last two decades by a ‘secret club’: Numbering no more than 15 frontline… Read More ›
The very best sociological biography I ever read was Kate Moses’ Wintering. In it, she takes Sylvia Plath’s collection of poetry Ariel and then re-orders each poem so they are laid out in the way Plath left them with/as her… Read More ›
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 ›
For years I wrote about small communities of people who were not famous, but were, at least, breathing, that is, alive. Now I mostly write about one famous, (or, perhaps to some, infamous), man, who, though an internationally recognized, (not… Read More ›
Studies in Social and Political Thought General Call for Papers – Fall 2011 Studies in Social and Political Thought is soliciting papers from graduate students and scholars working in the areas of social and political thought broadly construed. SSPT is… Read More ›