“Katerina Tarnovska is a Ukrainian preschool teacher, a kickboxing world champion and a self-proclaimed descendent of the legendary warrior women of the Amazon. In 2002 she founded Asgarda, a martial art exclusively for women that is inspired by the tribal… Read More ›
Archive for January 2014
What Africa might have looked like today, had it never been colonised
http://rachelstrohm.com/2013/07/29/the-colonization-counterfactual/
The Sociological Science Behind Social Networks and Social Influence
Nicholas Christakis, Professor of Medical Sociology, Medicine, and Sociology at Harvard University If you think you’re in complete control of your destiny or even your own actions, you’re wrong. Every choice you make, every behavior you exhibit, and even every… Read More ›
Journeys Through Sociology
UC Berkeley have produced a great series of video interviews with former presidents and current board members of the International Sociological Association. These engaging interviews mix professional interests and personal reflections in a way that we rarely encounter within the… Read More ›
Rorty, Realism and the Idea of Freedom
In contrast to the scorn which Rorty’s name now provokes in some quarters, it’s arresting to see the esteem in which he was held by Roy Bhaskar in the late 80s, albeit in the context of a trenchant philosophical critique…. Read More ›
The Art of Sociological Argument – review by @AcademicDiary
Graham Crow’s The Art of Sociological Argument (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) is a book about rhetoric and how sociologists have made their arguments and communicated with their readers. Crow takes eight sociological writers from the classic founders to the present day. Each sociologist… Read More ›
Call for papers: Geographies of children and young people’s popular cultures, identities and subcultures
Title of session: Geographies of children and young people’s popular cultures, identities, and subcultures Sponsored by: Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group Session convenors: John Horton (The University of Northampton, UK) & Peter Kraftl (University of Leicester, UK)… Read More ›
DEADLINE TOMORROW – CfP: Quantified Self Research Network, March 25th @SocioWarwick
The next meeting of the Quantified Self Research Network will take place on the 25th March at the University of Warwick from 1pm to 6pm. It’s an informal seminar to present work in progress and is open to all. If you would like to… Read More ›
Launch of ‘SexGen Northern Network’ and seminar on Compulsory Sexualities
We would like to invite you to get involved in the ‘sexgen’ network. ‘sexgen’ is a collaborative interdisciplinary network bringing together gender and sexuality based research centres around the North of England. We aim to bring academic research, writing and… Read More ›
Our Most Popular Posts This Month
Pride, Propaganda and Poverty Porn: On Benefits and Proud Charles Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination and why we fail to match it today An invitation to punk sociology A Summer of Television Poverty Porn An Interview with Sociologist Patricia Leavy about… Read More ›
“What should I do with my 20s?” Stop-motion Animation
(ht Study Hacks)
Roy Bhaskar on the Fetishisation of Facts
What is a ‘fact’? This deceptively simple question provides a route into the most pressing issues concerning the philosophy of science. In a short essay, “Philosophies as Ideologies of Science: A Contribution to the Critique of Positivism”, Roy Bhaskar offers… Read More ›
Your ‘daily dose of Sociological Imagination’: reflections on social media and public sociology
Your ‘daily dose of Sociological Imagination’: reflections on social media and public sociology by Mark Carrigan and Milena Kremakova This website’s raison d’etre was initially nebulous, tentative and ambitious all at the same time: we wanted to create a new online… Read More ›
Getting your research noticed by journalists
Interested in getting your research noticed by journalists? The LSE Impact Blog recently published an article by a politics PhD student which reflected on this process. Engaging with the media is something which PhD students are rarely encouraged to do but… Read More ›
CfP: Junior Theorists Symposium
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS 2014 Junior Theorists Symposium Berkeley, CA 15 August 2014 Submission Deadline: 15 February 2014 We invite submissions for extended abstracts for the 8th Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS), to be held in Berkeley, CA on August 15th, 2014, the day… Read More ›
Call for papers – Social media in social research
The Social Research Association will be hosting our fourth annual Social Media in Social Research conference on Friday 16 May 2014, at the British Library Conference Centre in London (Bronte room). This well-established event brings together social researchers from many different… Read More ›
Review of ‘What is Qualitative Interviewing?’ by Rosalind Edwards and Janet Holland by Sadia Habib
Social science students interested in qualitative research methods, and in particular the philosophy of qualitative interviews should have a read of an accessible and new text which can be a helpful stepping stone for those embarking on social research journeys…. Read More ›
Evgeny Morozov on the Orgy of Amelioration
There’s an interesting article on the Boston Review which reflects on the critical work of Evgeny Morozov, with a particular focus on his recent critique of ‘solutionism’. We’ve attached a video below for those unfamiliar with his line of argument. The… Read More ›
CfP: Quantified Self Research Network, March 25th
The next meeting of the Quantified Self Research Network will take place on the 25th March at the University of Warwick from 1pm to 6pm. It’s an informal seminar to present work in progress and is open to all. If you would like to… Read More ›
Self-tracking and ‘techorexia’
One of the (many) things which fascinates me about self-quantification tools is their seeming capacity to both increase individual autonomy and extend control over the individual. However my instinctive personal reactions to this tend to be a matter of seeing… Read More ›
The fascinating banality of business bullshit
There are many reasons not to listen to this nonsense. The glaring philosophical contradictions, the creepily messianic tones of his speech, the self-indulgent and naive politics underlying it. But as an emerging managerial discourse, upon which this man has apparently… Read More ›
What is Digital Sociology?
“What is Digital Sociology? ” on Bundlr
Sociological Imagination and UK Riots
“Sociological Imagination and UK Riots” on Bundlr
Pride, Propaganda and Poverty Porn: On Benefits and Proud
by Tracy Jensen A few weeks after my first post on the eruption of this genre (where I examined We All Pay Your Benefits broadcast on the BBC), Five broadcast its own contribution to poverty porn, On Benefits and Proud. … Read More ›
CfP: Digital Sociology PhD/ECR Workshop
Are you a PhD student or Early Career Researcher doing work in digital sociology? The BSA Digital Sociology Group has organised a PhD/ECR Workshop where a limited number of participants can get feedback on their work from peers and established academics in… Read More ›
Harvey Specter: a study in late modern sociopathy
Over the holidays I stumbled across Suits and found myself weirdly hooked by it. It tells the story of Mike Ross, a gifted stoner whose life has been going nowhere, bumbling into an interview for new associates at a prestigious law firm… Read More ›
CfP: Quantified Self Research Network, March 25th
The next meeting of the Quantified Self Research Network will take place on the 25th March at the University of Warwick from 1pm to 6pm. It’s an informal seminar to present work in progress and is open to all. If you would like to… Read More ›
The TEDification of #HigherEd? Negotiating between the accessibly simple and the simplistically accessible
There’s a particularly incisive rehearsal in the Guardian of what has become a well established critique of TED. There’s a lot of this I agree with but I nonetheless find the general thrust of the argument really problematic: So what is TED… Read More ›