If you’re looking for a New Year’s Resolution – have you considered leaving Facebook? There are many reasons to do so, and getting more compelling all the time – all it takes is a little resolution. 1) Privacy Everyone should… Read More ›
Archive for December 2012
Ethics and Social Theory: The Work of Andrew Sayer
University of Wales, Newport (City Campus) 22 February 2013 | 09:45-16:45 Ethics and Social Theory: The Work of Andrew Sayer Andrew Sayer’s work in critical social science has ranged across political economy, social theory and ethics – combining insights from each, and shedding… Read More ›
The Collapse of The American Dream Explained in Animation
(editor’s note: we don’t endorse the analysis in the video, particularly not in the last 10 mins [!!] but we thought it was an interesting video)
Sandy Hook and Call of Duty: the toxic relationship between “violent” games and the media
Following the tragic events of Friday in Newtown, Connecticut, a friend and I had been trying to guess how long it would take the media to blame allegedly “violent” video games for the latest spree killing. We didn’t need to… Read More ›
Daddy Leave in Norway
This is the Idle Ethnographer’s share of social advertising for today. In Norway, 90% of men take their 3 months leave, while in the UK only 40% of men take the 2 week daddy leave to which they are entitled… Read More ›
Trees and happiness
A recent report unearthed an empirical link between happiness and …trees. I wonder if Christmas trees could also help us be happy? Read the article in the Guardian here.
Want a Christmas tour of Slavoj Žižek’s apartment?
(Yes, we might have made up the Christmas bit)
Merry (sociological) Christmas!
As part of the University of Warwick’s mini Christmas lecture series this year, Dr Sam Lyle talks about how women make Christmas happen: See all fascinating and informative mini lectures here!
Deconstructing a… take-away menu
We don’t normally post fake news such as ones from the Onion, but this one is an exception. It is not fake. It is true. An exploratory mini-survey among current and recent PhD students in sociology and related disciplines has… Read More ›
The social scientists behind Obama’s victory
This year’s USA presidential elections were very exciting and contested, but perhaps less obviously ground breaking than the previous ones. However, important structural shifts have happened in the way in which the campaign is conceived, organised, and carried out. In… Read More ›
The US sociology job market in 2012
As the year draws to a close, let’s have a look at the sociology job market across in the USA in 2012. Neal at Scatterplot have made a crude but very helpful visualisation of the decreasing number of jobs available for sociologists… Read More ›
The Woollen T-shirt Strikes Back
(reposted from 300daysinberlin.wordpress.com where the Idle Ethnographer posts not entirely sociological impressions about being a foreigner, once again) I have owned this goddamnugly woollen T-shirt since I can remember myself, and that was a pretty long time ago: some time in… Read More ›
“What on earth will I tweet about?”: Feeling Comfortable with Social Media
“What on earth will I tweet about?” from Mark Carrigan
Sociology of procrastination
I want to write about the sociology of procrastination… perhaps tomorrow. Joke aside, here are a few useful resources for those procrastinators among our readers who would like to acquire some robust theoretical and empirical knowledge about this fascinating phenomenon…. Read More ›
What does the future hold for ethnography? An interview with Alex Smith
In this interview I talk to Alex Smith (right) about the New Ethnographies book series he edits. I was interested in this series because of its deliberate intention to embrace and ferment the extension and productive growth of this most traditional… Read More ›
Sociologists also have fun
A glimpse into the sociology student culture in Germany… Here is how sociology students at the Humboldt University in Berlin advertised their first semester party a few days ago:
Fashion online
It is interesting to see how the fashion industry has been employing new computer visualisation techniques to approach realistic, three-dimensional human body shapes. This influences the way we shop, as well as the dynamic of the market for clothes: for… Read More ›
The death toll of postsocialist mass privatisation
In , I did over 50 interviews with Bulgarian maritime workers. I wanted to study the post-socialist transformations of institutions and practices of maritime labour – and how those changes affected the working lives of seafarers and other maritime workers…. Read More ›
New collaborative labour history project
LabourStart, an internation news and campaigning website for trade unionists, has launched a new collaborative project and is asking labour history enthusiasts to help! They want to produce a ‘Today in Labour History’ calendar that can be added as a widget… Read More ›
Why do I care about my research and activism?
I am a third-year PhD student currently attached to the University of Durham and am publicly known as an activist for women’s issues in Hong Kong. I would like to briefly share my research, activism and thoughts on these. While… Read More ›
My 12 Favourite Living Sociologists by Prof Graham Scambler
On twitter a few months back I ventured a list of ‘top ten’ living sociologists. What I meant of course was my favourites, meaning those who had most impressed or influenced me during my intellectual travels. Without revisiting that list I… Read More ›
Jews and Tattoos, or What happens when religion clashes with everyday life?
I recently learnt that among the rules that Orthodox Jews observe is not tattooing their skin. This made sense initially and I thought that the reason was the forceful branding of people in concentration camps. However, the prohibition is in… Read More ›
Being Human in the Information Age – Dan Buzzo
The hypothesis of the University of Warwick’s Being Human Research Network notes that, “Human life is increasingly driven and mediated by technology and technological change with profound implications for human identity and behaviour.” Indeed, the way in which we express… Read More ›
Getting Started: Social Media for Academics
<a href=”http://bundlr.com/b/getting-started-social-media-for-academics” target=”_blank”>”Getting Started: Social Media for Academics” on Bundlr</a>
The Tweets and the Streets: an interview with Paolo Gerbaudo
In this interview Mark Carrigan talks to Paolo Gerbaudo about his new book Tweets and the Streets. In a fascinating study based on ethnographic fieldwork during the Egyptian revolution, the author deftly charts a course which avoids the extremes that polarise the… Read More ›
Surviving a PhD – 10 Top Tips
I was awarded my PhD in January this year following a successful viva in November 2011, so thought I would try and summarise my experiences over the last 3-4 years and see if I could come up with some key points of… Read More ›
The reasons for female religiosity
Why are women – historically as well as today – on average more religious than men, even though they are mostly excluded from leadership positions? In their new book entitled Why Are Women More Religious Than Men?, two sociologists from… Read More ›
Who are the English Defence League?
Two recent articles about the EDL might also be of interest to readers: Hilary Pilkington from the MYPLACE project used a recent article to explore the experience of going on an EDL demonstration from an insider’s perspective. The Extremis project… Read More ›
Follow 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 ›