When considering the future of the research seminar, it’s best to begin by recalling that ‘seminar’ relates to words like ‘seminal’ and ‘seminary’. No, I don’t mean the politically correct point that it is focussed on the male semen. Rather,… Read More ›
Archive for January 2015
What is Philosophical Sociology?
In this podcast recorded at a Centre for Social Ontology seminar, Daniel Chernilo (Reader in Social and Political Thought at Loughborough University) discusses his work on philosophical sociology. This was the basis for a recent paper in the British Journal of Sociology.
Our most popular posts this month
Charlie Hebdo: #JesuisCharlie ou Non? Does Sociology as a Discipline Have a Future in the UK after the REF? How to write a good sociology essay (and not panic) Charles Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination and why we fail to match… Read More ›
An eclectic account of lay morality and charitable giving in the UK – Feb 17th @SocioWarwick
Balihar Sanghera (Kent) Tuesday, February 17th 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM, R1.04 Ramphal Building, University of Warwick This paper examines how charitable giving is an outcome of different interacting elements of lay morality. Charitable giving reflects people’s capacity for fellow-feeling… Read More ›
Sociology’s Promise and the Sociological Imagination
The concept of Sociological Imagination entered circulation in the 1959 book of the same name by the American Sociologist C. Wright Mills. It moves from a prophetic opening (‘Nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of… Read More ›
Ignorance in the ‘Golden Age of Television’
by Tracy Jensen Last month the House of Commons hosted an evening debate “Manufacturing Stereotypes of Benefit Claimants: the role of the media and political leaders”. It was remarkable for all the wrong reasons and I’ve been getting stuck trying… Read More ›
Book Review: Disposed to Learn – Schooling, Ethnicity and the Scholarly Habitus
Reviewed by Garth Stahl Disposed to Learn: Schooling, Ethnicity and the Scholarly Habitus by Megan Watkins and Greg Noble is a thought-provoking, cohesive, and deeply engrossing monograph of research which will be of interest to scholars studying ethnicity and education… Read More ›
Call for papers: Beyond the Negativity of Death: Towards a New Necropolitics
Dear Colleagues, At least since Ernest Becker’s 1970s anthropological classic, The Denial of Death, but with precedents from Epicurus to Freud, death has been presented as the ultimate fact about the human condition, which while certainly not positive in its… Read More ›
The Sociologist in the Strip Club
There’s a wonderful essay in the New Yorker reflecting on Howard Becker’s life and work. Among many other features, it contains a trenchant critique of Bourdieu: “Bourdieu’ s big idea was the champs, field, and mine was monde, world—what’s the… Read More ›
Centre for Social Ontology Seminars: Spring Term 2015 (@SocioWarwick)
Centre for Social Ontology Seminars: Spring Term 2015 January 27th: Dave Elder-Vass (Loughborough University) R1.15 Prosumption, appropriation and the ontology of economic form February 3rd: Beth Weaver (University of Strathclyde) R1.15 The Relational ‘We’ in Social Morphogenesis February 17th: Balihar… Read More ›
The Super Rich and Us
I thought this was pretty good, given it’s a popular show produced for prime time TV:
CFP for the Asexuality Studies Interest Group at the NWSA Annual Meeting 2015
2015 Call for Papers about Asexuality Asexuality Studies Interest Group National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) November 12-15, 2015, Milwaukee, Wisconsin The NWSA Asexuality Studies Interest Group welcomes papers for the 2015 NWSA annual conference. These asexuality-related themes are orientated towards… Read More ›
What is Digital Sociology?
What is Digital Sociology? I really like that Deborah Lupton suggested this title for her recent lecture at Warwick because it’s a question which fascinates me. Obviously this is in part a matter of terminological novelty, with ‘digital sociology’ obviously supplementing… Read More ›
2015 – The year of the new necropolitics?
by Emilie Whitaker Unusually for a festive period associated with new beginnings and births, the past fortnight has been suffused with debate around death and dying. The death of Debbie Purdy, long-term campaigner for assisted dying, reopened the ‘right to… Read More ›
The Relational ‘We’ in Personal Morphogenesis – February 3rd @SocioWarwick
Beth Weaver (Strathclyde) Tuesday, February 3rd 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM, R1.15 Ramphal Building, University of Warwick This paper discusses my empirical application of a relational realist analytic framework to illuminate the role of social groups or collectives, as social… Read More ›
Prosumption, appropriation and the ontology of economic form – January 27th @SocioWarwick
Dave Elder-Vass (Loughborough) Tuesday, January 27, 2015 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM, R1.15 Ramphal Building, University of Warwick Prosumption – the unpaid performance of productive work by ‘consumers’ who thus help commercial businesses to generate a profit – is perhaps… Read More ›
Syndicalist Sociology: The Forgotten Work of Guillaume De Greef
by Jeff Shantz, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Vancouver Radical perspectives, particularly those that have connections with or roots in actual movements for social change and resistance, often find their contributions unacknowledged or marginalized within formal academic disciplines such as the social sciences…. Read More ›
What will post-democracy look like?
As anyone who reads my blog regularly might have noticed, I’m a fan of Colin Crouch’s notion of post-democracy. I’ve interviewed him about it a couple of times: once in 2010 and again in 2013. Whereas he’d initially offered the notion to illuminate… Read More ›
What makes a discipline “successful”? Thoughts on the counter-productive anarchy of UK sociology
Colin Mills from Oxford Sociology has posted an interesting response to Steve Fuller’s piece here last week about the fortunes of Sociology in the UK’s research assessment exercise. Many of the complaints that have followed the REF concern the peer review… Read More ›
Demographics of social networks in the US
These findings from the Pew Internet Project are interesting. I had no idea how widely used Pinterest and Instagram were: Facebook: 23% of adult internet users/19% of entire adult population Twitter: 71% of adult internet users/58% of entire adult population Instagram: 26% of… Read More ›
Subtraction stories and social change
The closest thing I have to an historiographical principle is to always be suspicious of what Charles Taylor calls ‘subtraction stories’. While he uses the concept to refer to congratulatory stories of rational emancipation in which human beings have gradually dispensed… Read More ›
Social media and ambient intimacy
View image | gettyimages.com There’s a pervasive tendency to see social media as something detrimental to the quality of human relationships. The precise formulation tends to vary but in practice it amounts to a claim that ‘real’ and ‘meaningful’ (i.e…. Read More ›
Universal Credit: a quiet revolution in the Welfare State
Universal Credit: a quiet revolution in the Welfare State 23 January 2015 Reichel Hall, Bangor University The introduction of Universal Credit is the most significant and wide- ranging change to the benefits system since its establishment in 1948. The Credit… Read More ›
Call for Papers – International Social Theory Consortium 2015
INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL THEORY CONSORTIUM 2015 http://socialtheory.org/upcoming-conference.html 14th Annual Conference of the International Social Theory Consortium Cambridge, UK, June 18-19, 2015 RECONSTRUCTING SOCIAL THEORY, HISTORY AND PRACTICE CALL FOR PAPERS With regard to developments in social theory, the past 30 years… Read More ›
Honoring W.E.B. Du Bois 2012
The Board of Trustees at the University of Pennsylvania appointed Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois Honorary Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies on February 17th 2012. The day included three intellectual panels, art installation, musical tribute, and a… Read More ›
Two digital sociology events @sociowarwick on January 13th
What is Digital Sociology? An evening lecture by Deborah Lupton with Mark Carrigan and Emma Uprichard responding. It will take place in S0.21 from 5pm to 7pm. This is in the Social Sciences Building on the University of Warwick campus…. Read More ›
Some thoughts on sociological blogging
The potential value and dangers of sociological blogging arise because of an environment in which the demands of audit culture incentivise the production of ‘unread’ and ‘unloved’ publications which are too often written to be counted rather than to be… Read More ›
W.G. Runciman @SocioWarwick on January 22nd
The Social Theory Centre at Warwick is pleased to announce two events happening on Thursday 22nd January 2015 with W.G. Runciman (Trinity College, Cambridge; ex-President of the British Academy): Why So Little, Why So Much?: Change in English Society Since the… Read More ›