I have no musical pedigree, or ability. I have experienced this ‘lack’ the more so since moving to the village of Mickleham, which seems to have more than its fair share of talent. Stand-out musicians include Clare Kennington, a superb… Read More ›
Archive for August 2013
BSA Realism Study Group Seminar: Contemporary Issues in Realist Thought- 6th Sept
BSA Meeting Room, London. We are pleased to announce our speakers for the forthcoming seminar to debate contemporary issues in realist thought. Please see attached flyer for further details and abstracts. Graham Scambler, University College London ‘Taking interdisciplinarity seriously: realism and explanations… Read More ›
Scheduling my academic life
I really enjoyed Raul Pacheco-Vega’s recent post on how he schedules his work life ‘to the very minute’ so I thought I’d offer my own reflections. I’m intellectually fascinated by how people organise their everyday lives for both personal and academic reasons…. Read More ›
Youth Researcher Development Workshop
FINAL CALL FOR PRESENTERS (Please circulate widely) British Sociological Association Youth Study Group Researcher Development Workshop for Research Students and Early Career Researchers BSA Seminar Room, Imperial Wharf, London, Thursday 7th November 2013 The BSA Youth Study Group invites research students… Read More ›
The Politics of Circulation, Human Agency and Building Your Own Information Environment
In the spirit of structured procrastination I thought I’d put some thoughts down which occurred when reading Dave Beer’s paper on the Politics of Circulation earlier today (weirdly enough, also in the spirit of structured procrastination, it’s like I have some impending deadline that… Read More ›
40 reasons why you should blog about your research
It helps you become more clear about your ideas. It gives you practice at presenting your ideas for a non-specialist audience. It increases your visibility within academia. It increases your visibility outside academia and makes it much easier for journalists, campaigners and… Read More ›
The Beginner’s Guide to Multi-Author Blogging [v1.0]
The term ‘blogging’ has a strange history. For some, it still conveys a rather unglamorous image, captured in Andrew Marr’s infamous remarks a few years ago that “a lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald,… Read More ›
Our Most Popular Posts This Month
The (un)intelligibility of academics and being ‘a mere journalist’ Charles Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination and why we fail to match it today The Ethnographer, by Jorge Luis Borges ‘You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself… Read More ›
CfP: Hard Times – Austerity and Popular Culture
Although the British Prime Minister David Cameron popularised the renowned axiom ‘the age of austerity’ in a speech of 2009, political discourse has long given shape to popular rhetoric on the subject. The sentiments of ‘make do and mend’ and… Read More ›
The craft of co-writing
As with more things in life than I care to admit, the notion of co-writing has always been loosely tinged by association with images from Frasier. Witness the wonderful episode where Frasier and Niles attempt to write a book together:… Read More ›
Jodi Dean – ‘Complexity as Capture: Neoliberalism and Communicative Capitalism’
Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) gives the opening plenary lecture at the ‘Neoliberalism, Crisis and the World System’ conference organised by Nicholas Gane and Claire Westall at the University of York, UK, July 2nd, 2013. For a full… Read More ›
Against ‘Shaking Up’ the Social Science
A recent blog post by Nicholas A. Christakis on the New York Times site about the need for ‘shaking up’ the social sciences has provoked a great deal of debate online. The author argues that while the natural sciences have flourished in… Read More ›
The Foundational Economy in Britain by Karel Williams
In October 2012, British Sociological Association journal Work, employment and society hosted a one-day conference reflecting on key debates and looking forward to what the future might hold for the discipline and the journal. We are happy to have video… Read More ›
What is Sociology for?
But, sometimes, asking what something is ‘for’ can, if understood as an expository tactic, a starting-point rather than a ruling, be a means of helping us to clear away the discursive debris that accumulates round any widely used category. The… Read More ›
The (un)intelligibility of academics and being ‘a mere journalist’
In many academic circles today anyone who tries to write in a widely intelligible way is liable to be condemned as a ‘mere literary man’ or, worse still, ‘a mere journalist.’ Perhaps you have already learned that these phrases, as… Read More ›
BSA Realism Study Group Seminar: Contemporary Issues in Realist Thought- 6th Sept
BSA Meeting Room, London. We are pleased to announce our speakers for the forthcoming seminar to debate contemporary issues in realist thought. Please see attached flyer for further details and abstracts. Graham Scambler, University College London ‘Taking interdisciplinarity seriously: realism and explanations… Read More ›
CfP: Quantified Self and Self-Tracking
In the last few years there has been a significant increase in public and academic interest in the use of devices or techniques for the accumulation, aggregation and analysis of personal data. Apps for mobile phones such asTrack My Run and… Read More ›
Sociologists and Trade Unions: The Owl of Minerva? by Richard Hyman
In October 2012, British Sociological Association journal Work, employment and society hosted a one-day conference reflecting on key debates and looking forward to what the future might hold for the discipline and the journal. We are happy to have video… Read More ›
CfP: Beyond Binaries: Exploring the Psychosocial
The idea of the psychosocial (or psycho-social) can be traced back to Sigmund Freud’s early writings, particularly ‘The Future of an Illusion’ and ‘Civilization and its Discontents’ address sociological notions of structures, classes, society, the masses as well as psychoanalytic… Read More ›
Omni Reboot: A new website for philosophical science fiction
Two weeks ago, a New Jersey based venture launched a new web magazine in the heritage of Bob Guccione‘s Omni. Besides publishing the Penthouse magazine, Guccione cared deeply about art and science, as Claire Evans, editor of Omni Reboot claims…. Read More ›
Economists and the Politics of Austerity
This wonderful post by Simon Wren-Lewis, who is far and away my favourite economics blogger, gets to the heart of austerity politics and its implications for economics as an academic discipline. The underlying question has long fascinated me: are economic ideas… Read More ›
Researching Affect and Psychosocial Studies
For those interested in psychosocial approaches to research, this video series I just stumbled across will be of interest. It’s from a seminar series which was jointly organised by people from Cardiff University and City University a few years ago…. Read More ›
Beardyman’s polyphonic me
Beardyman, renowned beatboxer who we featured here, describes the machine he and his collaborators have built to overcome the limitations of the human voice:
William Davies – ‘The Revenge of the Social’
William Davies (University of Warwick) speaking on ‘The Revenge of the Social’ at the ‘Neoliberalism, Crisis and the World System’ conference organised by Nicholas Gane and Claire Westall at the University of York, UK, July 3rd, 2013. For a full… Read More ›
The Genesis of Value
The Genesis of Value by Hans Joas is a complex book which begins with a deceptively simple question: how do values and value commitments arise? It even states its answer at the outset (“values arise in experiences of self-formation and self-transcendence”)… Read More ›
Jamie Peck – ‘Explaining (with) Neoliberalism’
amie Peck (University of British Columbia) – ‘Explaining (with) Neoliberalism’. This was the closing plenary lecture at the ‘Neoliberalism, Crisis and the World System’ conference organised by Nicholas Gane and Claire Westall at the University of York, UK, July 3rd,… Read More ›