Is feminism as a movement no longer indispensable? Is it redundant or too aggressive for contemporary society? In The Aftermath of Feminism Angela McRobbie argues that the contemporary social and cultural landscape (especially in the global North) could be called… Read More ›
Archive for December 2011
SI Top 10 #8 – In Pictures: 50,000 March for Higher Education in London
An estimated 50,000 university and college students and academics marched in Westminster yesterday. They were protesting against the raising of tuition fees to £9000 per student per year of study and the cutting of government funding for teaching in the… Read More ›
SI Top 10 #7 – Pathology and Asexual Politics
The asexual community has only existed for about ten years, and its existence is due in large part to the growth of the internet. The center of the community is the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN, asexuality.org), which defines an… Read More ›
‘Lady Di’ and Kim Jong-il: weird affinities…
Since the death of Kim Jong-il, the world’s media has been voyeuristically fixated on the scenes of public mourning gripping North Korea. As a sociologist, I’ve found some of this footage fascinating. So too the way in which these scenes… Read More ›
SI Top 10 #6 – Anarchism and The Sociological Imagination: An Interview with Dana Williams
I first came across Dana Williams and his work on an anarchist academics email list about three years ago. I was excited to find another person bringing anarchism and sociology together! There were, I believe, literally only a couple that… Read More ›
SI Top 10 #5 – Response to George Monbiot’s Rant against Academic Publishers
In the US, we have the phrase ‘waving a flag and kissing a baby’ for somebody who plays to the gallery. And this is exactly what George Monbiot has done in his Guardian rant against academic publishing houses. Running neck-and-neck… Read More ›
SI Top 10 #4 – Null Set
IHAVENOIDEAWHATYOUARETALKINGABOUT D : (via Ache) (15 April 2013, Editor’s note: As a reader has kindly pointed out, the author of the diagram is David Shrigley who does lots of awesome things: David Shirgley. The editors apoligise for not giving a… Read More ›
SI Top 10 #3 – Charles Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination and why we fail to match it today
Charles Wright Mills’ body of work was substantial by any standards but for someone who died at the age of forty-five it was remarkable. The range and substance of Mills’ work is impressive but even more so is its originality,… Read More ›
SI Top 10 #2 – Car Boot Sale
In this episode, a sneaky ethnographer of East European origin embarks on a quest to deconstruct one of Britain’s informal institutions: The Local Bank Holiday Sunday Car Boot Sale. Below are her unabridged and unabashed field-notes. Rather than participant observation, this… Read More ›
Christmas, comsumerism, presents, and gender
A woman walks into a toy shop and asks: “Do you have a plush Pinko the Pink Panther? Can I have one in sky-blue, for a little boy, please?” After you have unwrapped your presents, read this light-hearted article in… Read More ›
SI Top 10 #1 – A Mexican, a Kiwi and a Nigerian walk into a bar… a dose of (sociological) Xmas humour
Over the rest of 2011, we’ll be reposting the 10 most popular SI articles in the 1 1/2 years we’ve been around, in preparation for lots of new stuff next year. Here’s #1 – enjoy! You are not seriously checking… Read More ›
Sociology song
For a change from the Christmas tunes, here is something, ahem, serious. Professional. OK, only professional and not serious. Anyway – happy Christmas to those of you who celebrate it with this song by Tom Lehrer – an American singer-songwriter,… Read More ›
Call for Papers – Visual Sociology
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 ›
The universe (and everything in it)
As sociologists, we deal with a wide range of empirical and philosophical phenomena, but their scope, in universal terms, is quite narrow: locked somewhere between the individual human and the whole of humanity. With this in mind, the Idle Ethnographer… Read More ›
A modest proposal for postgraduate education
I just came across a fascinating passage from a lecture given by Carl Rogers, founder of person centered therapy, about the personal and intellectual biography which led him to his life’s work. In it he describes an experience as a… Read More ›
I can has language play? Construction of Language and Identity in LOLspeak
I can has language play: Construction of Language and Identity in LOLspeak from Lauren Gawne on Vimeo.
Do schools kill creativity?
If you’d asked me while I was still at school, it’s pretty likely I would have said ‘yes’. A decade later, having watched this video, I realise that I feel the same way. Except that having now watched this great… Read More ›
STUCK BETWEEN MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY? THE MODERN HISTORY OF COVENTRY
I’m starting to practically sketch out plans for a project I’ve had in mind for a couple of years now: a social history of Coventry told through life history interviews with life long residents of the city who were born… 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 ›
The 12 Days of a PhD Student’s Christmas
In the spirit of Christmas, we’re delighted to bring you the 12 Days of a PhD Student’s Christmas, courtesy of Anna Mackenzie from the University of Chester. Is anyone brave/foolhardy/drunk enough to perform a rendition of the song? If so,… Read More ›
Questioning cultural relativism
Denyse O’Leary discusses cultural relativism through a particularly disturbing Is it still wrong if another culture says it is right? A teacher’s surprising discovery
Our 10 most popular posts in November
Charles Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination and why we fail to match it today Perhaps the most demotivating image EVER (speaking as a website edited by two near-to-completion PhD students) The University Project Privilege & Oppression, Conflict & Compassion Review of… Read More ›
A useful mapping tool for sociologists
A friend of mine recently struggled to customise a map showing the numbers of girls in different countries who use a particular website that she is studying. I wish I had discovered this tool earlier, she would have found it… Read More ›
University life 41 years ago
The sixth former entering university often has difficulty in adjusting to a new academic and social life… … so this film, made by university of Warwick students back in the 1970s, served to prepare newcomers to university life (with a… Read More ›
The Sociological Imagination
Mills believed that the diffusion of the sociological imagination within American culture contained the political promise of helping individuals better understand and control the larger structural forces that shaped their lives. Many people, he claimed, failed to comprehend the impact… Read More ›
Reality Check
Right, we are going to do something different today. It’s called a Reality Check.
Sociology@Warwick
A quick flag up to any interested readers that the Sociology Department at the University of Warwick now has a blog and twitter feed. Although Sociological Imagination has no formal connection to the department, a number of people involved in… Read More ›
Russia and democracy: analysis by Mark Harris
As someone who is half-Russian, counts Russian as her first language, but who has never set foot in Russia (only to Ukraine), I often find myself torn between a ‘Western’ and a ‘Russian’ logic. This is not something I could… Read More ›
Popular culture and the unconstrained sociological imagination
Over the last few years there has been one passage of academic social science text that has stayed with me more than any other. The issue it raises concers the way in which the sociological imagination is located and deployed… Read More ›