Check out the website “Films for action”: it has an excellent online collection of films. Here is their Film of the Day for 22 February 2013:
Archive for February 2013
Beppe Grillo, The clown prince of Italian politics
In case any readers have missed the rapid rise of this fascinating figure:
The Vaue of Multi-Author Blogging for Communicating Research
The word ‘blogging’ often has negative connotations. Yet blogging can be understood both as an output and as a platform. Many negative views about blogging are connected to a certain idea of what it is: a single author, using it as a forum to… Read More ›
Request for help from New Social Media, New Social Science
How do you make decisions about ethical questions when designing online research? Where are the gray or sticky areas? What resources have helped– what do you need? The New Social Media, New Social Science project would like your input so… Read More ›
No to the Euro! @ProjectMYPLACE report from Latvia
MYPLACE researcher Liga Rudzite from the Latvian team reports on the recent protests against new legislation to move towards the replacement of the Latvian Lat with the Euro. For more information on the MYPLACE project, visit the project’s website HERE or the project’s blog HERE. You can… Read More ›
Introducing a special feature: the ‘Sociologists of Crisis’ series
I Sociology and crisis often appear linked together, trapped in each other’s embrace sometimes as ‘intimate bedfellows’ and sometimes as an ‘odd couple’ too. What binds the one to the other is the very nature of their unusual relationship which,… Read More ›
CFP: The Para-Academic Handbook: A Toolkit for making-learning-creating-acting
There is a name for those under- and precariously employed, but actively working, academics in today’s society: the para-academic. Para-academics mimic academic practices so they are liberated from the confines of the university. Our work, and our lives, reflect… Read More ›
+1 for Efficient Labour: Gamification, Capitalism and Intellectual Responsibility
Earlier this week, it was reported in a number of outlets that Tesco has been using armbands to monitor employees at a distribution center, enabling management to track moment to moment activity in a way which was previously impossible: The… Read More ›
The Definitive Guide to Academic Social Media
“The Definitive Guide to Academic Social Media” on Bundlr
The Bulgarian Winter: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
On Wednesday, 20th February 2013, the Bulgarian government headed by Boyko Borissov has deposited its resignation. What happened? What comes next? Read anthropologist Mariya Ivancheva’s analysis below. (The article is reprinted with author’s permission from Criticatac, a Romanian left-wing comment and analysis web… Read More ›
“Can non-Europeans think?”
In this excellent short article consisting almost entirely of rhetorical questions, Hamid Dabashi (Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York) debunks the “ethnographic gaze” of Eurocentrism.
Gender in academia: how much have things changed?
This 1992 article discusses the barriers faced by female scientists and engineers. How much have things changed in the past 21 years? Not enough.
Women academic authors between 1665 and 2010
See this Chronicle of Higher Education report on the publishing patterns of female academic authors in the last three and a half centuries.
PhD & ECR summer school on Contesting Claims for Expertise in a Post-secular Age: In Search of Intellectual Life
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Contesting Claims for Expertise in a Post-secular Age: In Search of Intellectual Life IAS Summer School, University of Warwick, 15-19 July 2013 The current moment seems to be one of ‘crisis’ or at least of dramatic change… Read More ›
“My summer at an Indian call center” by Andrew Marantz
For our readers interested in the globalisation of labour and workers’ experiences, today’s reading is about call centres. Two documentary films, the 2005 film Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night and the 2006 film Bombay Calling also tackle this recent… Read More ›
Roger Burrows and Mike Savage: The coming crisis of empirical sociology
The sound quality is awful for the first 17 minutes but it improves a lot for the discussion after Roger Burrows finishes his talk. For those who haven’t read the (in)famous paper which is the starting point for this session,… Read More ›
Punk Economics – Economics in the dock
This great video is part of a wider series by the economist David McWilliams. If you like this as much as we did then you’ll probably want to watch the 8 others in the series. If only sociologists were communicating this effectively online!
Bird’s eye view of currently published research
If you are a visual learner (fancy way of saying that you are a fan of pictures and graphs), you might like to see this visualisation of the current ocean of research in all possible sub-fields, from dynamic network analysis… Read More ›
Why did men stop wearing high heels?
Finally a good article explaining the craze of high heels with the help of some well-researched historical evidence. After years of being baffled why on earth (rather, above earth) half of the (rich) world’s population is expected (and often cherishes… Read More ›
“The PhD is in need of revision”: a Canadian perspective
The PhD is in need of revision, writes Rosanna Tamburri of the Canadian online newspaper University Affairs. After completing five years of study towards his PhD in English at Queen’s University, Ian Johnston dropped out. To those who have similarly… Read More ›
Objective Mind: new online platform for post-soviet studies
Just a brief post to introduce you to a new and growing online platform dedicated to post-Soviet states. It is called (somewhat peculiarly) Objective Mind and offers analytical articles as well as background information on ex-Soviet countries, including Country Profiles and Portraits that anyone can… Read More ›
The riddle of modern day hermits
Every now and then, people who have rejected society get caught under its radar and their solitary lives make it into newspapers. Three recent stories in the papers talked about such contemporary recluses living simple (or, rather, very difficult) lives… Read More ›
“Oh! There are other people just like me? I’m not so weird after all”: the transformation of identity in the digital age
The internet was integral to the formation of the asexual community. While the details are slightly messier than such an account suggests, the sociologically important aspects of its history can be summarised as follows: Individuals who don’t experience sexual attraction are made to feel… Read More ›