One of SI’s editors is working with Emma Head from Keele University to propose a Digital Sociology study group for the British Sociological Association. We’ve now collected enough signatures for the application to go ahead but we thought some readers… Read More ›
Archive for November 2012
The Public Understanding of Science is a Political Issue: an interview with Alex Smith
In this interview Mark Carrigan talks to Alex Smith (right) about his recent fieldwork in Kansas City, part of the larger Making Science Public project, exploring the role that debates about the status of science are having in the unfolding of the… Read More ›
India’s XXI century untouchables
I recently talked to Pradeep Shinde, an anthropologist who studies the performance of work by sanitary workers in a Mumbai slum. He argues that the caste system in India is still very much present, and that alongside the changes caste-related… Read More ›
“Life gets under your skin”: reading about welfare and the lifecourse in plain English
As part of the Economic and Social Research Council Festival of Social Science that took place earlier this month (3-10 November 2012), researchers from the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health (ICLS) funded by the Economic and… Read More ›
The Accidental Sociologist is having a bit of an identity crisis….
There’s a moment in Heart of Darkness when, Kurtz, at the instance of his death, cries ‘The horror! The horror!’ The terror, madness and awful spectre of what has been and what is yet to come lie before him and… Read More ›
“Ultimately, if I’m honest, I do it because it’s fun”
In this short podcast recorded at a Digital Change GPP discussion event earlier this year, Eleonora Belfiore discusses her experience of using social media as an academic.
What does a career in social research entail?
So what do social researchers do? RSUK has launched a website about careers in science, exploring different possibilities of life as a researcher and the different career paths which UK researchers take. The website features researchers from all seven Research Councils… Read More ›
Are Teenagers more ‘Obedient’ These Days?
Recently Mark Easton, a BBC editor, observed that the “teenage rebels are not what they were.” By reviewing some of the recent analyses, he shows how much the new generation of teenagers are different from the past ones in the cases… Read More ›
Parenting in modern Britain: series of podcasts by the University of Warwick
In September 2012, the University of Warwick held a conference on the ‘Understanding Parenting: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives’. It was supported by The Wellcome Trust and brought together researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to discuss the debates surrounding childlessness, childbearing and childrearing. The… Read More ›
Why disability history should be on the school curriculum
A good article in the Guardian answering this question: here.
An early review of the Sociological Imagination
“Imagine a burly cowpuncher on the long, slow ride from the Panhandle of Texas to Columbia University, carrying in his saddle-bag some books which he reads with absorption while his horse trots along. Imagine that among the books are some… Read More ›
Is America the New ‘Old Country’?
The great journalist Walter Lippmann famously defined the twentieth century as the ‘American Century’. In 2012 the twentieth century is history: We’ve been there, done that. Now, it seems, America is the Old Country. The idea of countries being ‘old’… Read More ›
The evolution of mobile phones
Having coffee and waiting for a call. Once again, boredom proves the mother of great (or merely relatively entertaining) ideas. I am thinking about mobile phones. Fascinating things, aren’t they? I first saw a mobile phone (mobiphone) in the mid-1990s,… Read More ›
Some podcasting resources
The BSA PG Forum podcasting handbook An introduction to academic podcasting Audacity – free audio editor Call recorder for Skype (probably free ones out there but this is great) Tool to convert to or from MP3 The Sociological Imagination podcast section (e-mail here to… Read More ›
Call for Micro Podcasts
Over the last couple of years we’ve hosted a lot of podcasts on Sociological Imagination. However thus far all of them have been produced by us. We’d like to host some by you as well! Specifically micro podcasts on any… Read More ›
The Analytic-Continental Split in Philosophy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Continental-Analytic split in Western philosophy. The Analytic school favours a logical, scientific approach, in contrast to the Continental emphasis on the importance of time and place. But what are the origins of this… Read More ›
SI Profile: Margaret Archer
“SI Profile: Margaret Archer” on Bundlr
Nine resources for academics getting started with Twitter
Register for Twitter and find researchers to follow Engage with your network on Twitter “Why do you find Twitter useful as an academic?” The LSE’s list of academic twitter users Support, engagement, visibility and personalised news: Twitter has a lot to… Read More ›
Multi-author blogging resources for academics
An introduction to multi-author blogging Publishing on the web as a researcher Single author vs multi-author blogging “Blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now” Multi-author academic blogs are the… Read More ›
Advice on introducing Twitter to academics
Twitter has a definite image problem. It first penetrated the public consciousness in a way which has left it defined by celebrities and, particularly for academics, this is unattractive. If you want to persuade academics to use it, it’s important… Read More ›
Being Human in a Digital Age?
Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. See more of Erica Glasier’s fabulous work here.
Digital Sociology
“Digital Sociology” on Bundlr
Call for Contributions: 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 ›
Human, All Too Human
This astonishing 1999 BBC documentary series follows the lives of three prominent European philosophers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The theme of this documentary revolves heavily around the school of philosophical thought known as existentialism, although the term had… Read More ›
An excellent 1984 documentary about Ludwig Wittgenstein
If you’re unfamiliar with Wittgenstein and would like to understand him further, we can heartily recommend this biography:
Public Engagement and the Public Understanding of Science
In this podcast, originally recorded for Sociology@Warwick, Eric Jensen talks about public engagement and the public understanding of science. His research on the impacts of public engagement with science for visitors and audiences cuts across a wide range of settings, from zoos… Read More ›