COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE CONFERENCEWed 11 – Fri 13 June 2014, University of Warwick, UKhttp://compsocsci.eu/The increasing availability of large quantities of human behavioural data has drawn the interest of researchers across the social sciences, the natural sciences and engineering. This conference aims to… Read More ›
Archive for May 2014
Valuing Electronic Music
Valuing Electronic Music Upstairs at The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, London N1 9JB 6 June -10pm Admission free Valuing Electronic Music is an ongoing study of electronic music and the people who value it, carried out by Daniel Allington (Open University), Anna Jordanous (King’s… Read More ›
An Invitation to DIY Sociology
For the last few months I’ve been playing with the idea of DIY Sociology, largely as a result of my dissatisfaction with professional associations. The intuition underlying this is that the institutional forms of academic life are not immutable, arising in… Read More ›
Computational Social Science Conference
COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE CONFERENCEWed 11 – Fri 13 June 2014, University of Warwick, UKhttp://compsocsci.eu/The increasing availability of large quantities of human behavioural data has drawn the interest of researchers across the social sciences, the natural sciences and engineering. This conference aims to… Read More ›
Trafficked Filipino Teachers in the USA
I just read an article about something new and shocking to me – qualified teachers of mathematics (and other subjects) from the Philiphines who are recruited on one-year contracts to teach in USA public schools, but often end up in… Read More ›
Digital sociology and the coming crisis of qualitative research
This is a deliberately provocative title. But an interesting post by patter reminded me of a theme that has been on my mind for a couple of years. Pat’s post concerns the implications of the increased ‘findability’ of qualitative researchers for their practice: Once… Read More ›
A Remembrance of Things Past: Punk Sociology Avant la Lettre
When I attended Jesuit prep school in the mid-1970s, I bought the second edition of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolution, but it was a version that still reflected its origin as the final volume of the logical positivists’… Read More ›
What is progress in social theory?
At last year’s International Association for Critical Realism conference, I saw perhaps the most impressive conference presentation I’d witnessed in my five or six years of going to conferences regularly. Jamie Morgan demolished the notion of ‘norm circles’ offered by Dave Elder-Vass and he did… Read More ›
CfP: How capitalism survives? A Marxist-Feminist perspective
How capitalism survives? A Marxist-Feminist perspective Call for Papers within the framework of the 11th Historical Materialism Annual Conference ‘How Capitalism Survives’ – 6-9 November 2014 – Vernon Square, Central LondonThe Historical Materialism annual conference in London has emerged as… Read More ›
CfP: BSA Activism in Sociology Forum
BSA Activism in Sociology Forum welcomes new contributions from both established and early career researchers as well as sociologists outside of academia to share their hands-on activist experiences or reflections. Contributors are welcome to produce a new piece built around,… Read More ›
The Importance of Disappointment
Why disappointment? In common usage, and in the dictionary, we talk about disappointment as what happens, what we feel, when something we expect, intend, or hope for or desire does not materialise. One of the difficulties of living in our… Read More ›
Are you confused by critical realism?
If so then this glossary might be a helpful resource: Absence Actualism Change Closed and Open Systems Completion Constellation Critique and Transcendental Argument Determinism Dialectics Differentiation and Stratification Emergence Epistemic and Ontic Fallacies Epistemic Relativism and Judgmental Rationality Ethical Naturalism… Read More ›
The academic blogosphere, scholarly craft and the end of ‘pluralistic ignorance’
One of many useful discussions in Howard Becker’s Writing for Social Scientists concerns ‘pluralistic ignorance”. He argues that this social psychological effect manifests itself in academia in relation to writing. Academic writing is a private and isolated endeavour, in which adversity (rejections by… Read More ›
Inviting Readers to Review Books for Sociological Imagination
I would like to introduce myself as the Book Review Editor for Sociological Imagination. I am currently researching student identity in a south London school, after having taught English at Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 for many years in… Read More ›
TV game shows and social change
The jokes are usually about the speedboats. And, granted, it is funny when two people who live somewhere in the midlands or the north of England are shown a speedboat that they have just failed to win. But there is… Read More ›
Bourdieu meets Marx, Gramsci, Fanon, Freire, Beauvoir and Mills (in Burawoy’s imagination)
In this series Michael Burawoy conceives of a whole series of imagined ‘meetings’ between Bourdieu and leading political thinkers, elaborating his own understanding of Bourdieu’s work by considering its relationship with important intellectual trends: Prefaces 1. Sociology as a Combat Sport: Bourdieu… Read More ›
The difference between Foucault and Adorno
(HT Damon Young)
What are conferences for?
For many years my most common nightmare scene has been an academic conference. In those dreams I am alone in a conference hotel that is new and strange to me, and I am either lost or far from where I… Read More ›
Social Theory and Intellectual Translation
One of the problems I had when I studied analytic philosophy was my inability to map much of what I was studying onto how I saw the world. There were a few exceptions (Hume, Marxism, Causation, Political Philosophy) but I otherwise struggled to… Read More ›
The Centre for Social Ontology
The Centre for Social Ontology (CSO) was established in 2011 at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. Now based in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, its main focus is the Morphogenetic Project. The Morphogenetic Project produces an annual volume as part… Read More ›
The Media Sociology of that ‘Car Crash’ Farage/UKIP Interview
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) — and especially its leader Nigel Farage — has been under enormous scrutiny in the run-up to the European elections next week, where UKIP is expected to score very well, embarrassing all the major parties… 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 ›
Thirty Years On: Lessons from the Home Computer Boom
I wonder how many senior academics would feel comfortable rereading their PhD? Equally, I wonder how many current research students can imagine revisiting their work in twenty or thirty years? This is precisely what I did recently, having come to… Read More ›
Foucauldian analysis and the mystification of elites
In a recent review of The Reflexive Imperative*, Jonathon Joseph describes subjects “being encouraged to become active citizens and consumers who must make the right life choices based on acquiring the appropriate skills and information, making informed choices about risk activities, taking responsibility… Read More ›
The Public Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
The thing I like most about Bourdieu is his conception of public sociology. It seems clear to me that Bourdieu was a public sociologist, though others are less certain about this and I suspect it’s not a term he would have chosen to use himself…. Read More ›
Academic scribes, their writing and their unsociability
The paradox is that we academic scribes are not always very sociable. We cling to the library like bookish limpets that, like Kierkegaard, find real human beings too heavy to embrace. We speak a lot about society but all too… Read More ›
The politics of austerity
Richard Seymour had a thoughtful and incisive analysis in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago, released around the same time as his new book on austerity (see the video above). It addresses what I take to be the questions which the left has… Read More ›
Are 90% of academic papers really never cited?
There’s a fantastic article on the LSE Impact Blog which addresses this often cited yet rarely substantiated claim: Many academic articles are never cited, although I could not find any study with a result as high as 90%. Non-citation rates… Read More ›
The Centre for Social Ontology
The Centre for Social Ontology (CSO) was established in 2011 at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. Now based in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, its main focus is the Morphogenetic Project. The Morphogenetic Project produces an annual volume as part… Read More ›