Witness Daniel Gilbert, superstar psychologist of TED fame, starring in adverts for Prudential: And the rather less well known Adam Alter, who’s an assistant professor at NYU Stern, Weirdly Robin Dunbar, he of Dunbar’s number, starred in a Guinness advert… Read More ›
Archive for February 2014
#whereiwrite by @davidgbeer
There is a really interesting post here by Stuart Elden on his writing space, which links into another post on the topic and a related Twitter hashtag (#whereiwrite). My writing space has varied a bit over the last couple of years. I… Read More ›
The pen is stubborn, sputters – hell!
The pen is stubborn, sputters – hell! Am I condemned to scrawl? Boldly I dip it in the well, My writing flows, and all I try succeeds. Of course, the spatter Of this tormented night Is quite illegible. No matter:… Read More ›
Business as usual? Transforming Brazilian slumscapes in hyper-neoliberal digital environments
Too much ink has been spent on examining the socio-economic conditions under which shantytowns emerge as urban enclaves and develop into unique lifeworlds. As ‘cities within global cities’, such as Delhi, Cape Town, Kingston, Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro… Read More ›
Doing it for ourselves: the women’s workshop
by Ros Edwards and Val Gillies As the academy becomes further marketised and institutionalised, it grows harder to envisage operating academically outside of traditional organisational forms. Yet the resulting pressures, hierarchies and exclusions are leading many to look for alternatives. Can… Read More ›
Lorde, spoof Facebook posts and the future of academic knowledge
by Sumi Hollingworth I’m finding more and more friends posting ‘news’ articles and the like on Facebook that (depending on the post) attract a flurry of excited or outraged comments and interaction, and then turn out to be ‘hoaxes’ or… Read More ›
Eating disorders awareness week
This week (24 February – 2 March 2014) is dedicated to raising public awareness about eating disorders. Read more at the website of B-EAT – a charity working to beat eating disorders, www.b-eat.co.uk.
Bill Carroll: Grassroots organizations as alternatives in the global economy
William Carroll is a Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Victoria (Victoria, Canada). In this video from the 2012 Global Studies conference, he talks about his research on global politics, and looking at grassroots organizations as alternatives in… Read More ›
Blind Eye Forward
How does a critical sociologist approach a troubled world? Bill Carroll, professor of sociology at the Department of Sociology, University of Victoria (Victoria, Canada), has sent us this awesome music video. The original composition, entitled “Blind Eye Forward”, is a… Read More ›
Giving voice through animation: “my first crush”
This charming animation is based on interviews the artist conducted with people about their first encounters with love. As she puts it, “their animal counterparts tells their stories of humor and heartache” and, through doing so, give voice to these… Read More ›
Call for Papers: Power in a World of Becoming, Entanglement & Attachment
Authority & Political Technologies 2014 Power in a World of Becoming, Entanglement & Attachment ‘In every era the attempt must be made anew to rescue tradition from a conformism… Read More ›
Introductions, Writing Patterns, and Tidy Desks: Personal Reflections on the Writing Process
A while ago, Mark Carrigan asked me to contribute a blog to a series he was curating on the writing process. I said that I was too busy writing to do so. Now that I’ve just submitted the manuscript I… Read More ›
Some auto-ethnographic thoughts on the phenomenology of writing
How do you find time to write? I’ve become fascinated by this question in recent months. Implicit within it is an understanding of ‘writing’ which I’m coming to see as deeply problematic. It treats the creative activity of writing as… Read More ›
New student sociology journal at Warwick!
The Warwick Sociology Journal is a new journal founded and edited by students which will publish excellent undergraduate and postgraduate work. Each issue will have a central contemporary theme, and the journal accepts submissions from people of any discipline at… Read More ›
Are you a doctoral ‘student’?
That’s the great question Pat Thomson asked in a recent blog post. Are you a doctoral student? Or a doctoral researcher? I’ve tended towards the latter, partly because being called a student began to bug me as soon as I’d published my… Read More ›
What is happening in Bosnia?
Since 5 February 2014, all major cities in Bosnia have had daily mass protests by factory workers. What is happening and why? Read a good article by Michael Karadjis. .
SRO Rapid Response Call: Representations of the Poor and the Politics of Welfare Reform: ‘Benefits Street’ and Beyond
Recent public debate in the UK surrounding Channel 4’s ‘Benefits Street’ documentary has highlighted an apparent proliferation of media representations of unemployed and/or working class lives that emphasise themes such as dependency, laziness, anti-social behaviour and criminality. At the same… Read More ›
CfP: What are conferences for? The Political economy of academic events
The Sociological Imagination invites short articles ( words) critically reflecting upon the prevailing forms of intellectual meeting within the contemporary academy. What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? How could they be done differently? What are the sociological implications of these… Read More ›
“Just waiting for you to talk so that I can” – John Grant
Discussion, so it is said, is of key importance to the academic life. The debate, the flow of ideas, comparison and critique, amongst your peers, is the primary signifier of academia’s importance. Why then do so many academics sit through… Read More ›
Nikolas Rose on the Public Brain
The Human Brain Project is a rather enormous EU funded project, funded to the tune of €1.3 billion over 10 years, looking at future neuroscience, future medicine and future computing. It aims to overcome fragmentation within neuroscience, synthesise existing data sets and produce a platform to… Read More ›
Why I am quitting the British Sociological Association
Now that my PhD is almost complete, I’ve received a polite request from UCU that I rejoin as a staff member. I was pleased to find that subscription rates are on a sliding scale, with the highest band paying twice… Read More ›
The responsibility of being nice: An idea, a method and a personal utopia on suicide. A conversation with Dr. Ben Fincham
I. News that stale Having interrupted the flow of the Sociologists of Crisis series for a timely intervention on the issue of the Golden Dawn trials in my native Greece, it seems timely to return to a matter that was… Read More ›
CFP “International Conference on Men and Masculinities”, 11-13 September 2014, IZMIR TURKEY
Please distribute widely 1st International Conference on Men and Masculinities: “Identities, Cultures, Societies” will be held on 11-13 September 2014 in Izmir Turkey. Initiative for Critical Studies of Masculinities (ICSM) invites proposals for the first international conference on men and masculinities to… Read More ›
The Sociology of Friendship
There’s a great article by Lisa Wade in Salon talking about the ‘hidden crisis’ of white heterosexual American men. They have the fewest friends of any group within American society and, it seems, they wish they had more. What really caught my… Read More ›
The pedagogical value of Twitter: enhancing the collective identity of independent learners
Last year I taught on a newly designed module in my School and was struck by the value of Twitter as a learning resource and teaching tool. ‘Current Issues in Society’ is a first year undergraduate module that has deviated… Read More ›
Policing the ‘Benefits Crisis’: what would Stuart Hall do?
by Tracy Jensen Today the sad news was announced that Stuart Hall has died. My Twitter timeline and email account has been awash with mourning colleagues; scholars, researchers and students remembering and reflecting upon the legacy of his enormous archive… Read More ›
Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Žižek
Last year, whistleblower website WikiLeaks released three of the biggest ever leaks of classified information in history: the Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs and Cablegate. Since then the world has undoubtedly changed. Ambassadors have resigned amid scandals exposed… Read More ›
CfP: Where now for social justice?
REMINDER: CALL FOR PAPERS ‘WHERE NOW FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE MARGINALISATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE UK’ Thursday 12th – Friday 13th June 2014 We are inviting abstracts for a Two day Conference at Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, UK… Read More ›
Sexuality Summer School 26 – 30 May: Queer Anatomies
Sexuality Summer School 26 – 30 May: Queer Anatomies Registration for the Sexuality Summer School is open to all PhD and Masters students and will go live on 14 February 2014 at estore.manchester.ac.uk. The number of students is limited to 35 so book early to… Read More ›