How to write a good sociology essay (and not panic) The private eye’s guide to being a plain speaking politician Charles Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination and why we fail to match it today Charlie Hebdo: #JesuisCharlie ou Non? 40 reasons… Read More ›
Archive for December 2015
Inside the Lives of the 1% – How Power and Inequality Operate in Britain
INAUGURAL LECTURE BY PROF AERON DAVIS, CO-DIRECTOR OF PERC 5.30-7.30PM, 26TH JANUARY Over two decades Aeron Davis has interviewed some 350 elite subjects from the worlds of business, finance, politics and media: from Nigel Lawson to Jeremy Corbyn, Peter Oborne to… Read More ›
The @BigDataSoc and @DigitalSocSci Essay Competition
The Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) and Big Data & Society (BD&S) intend to award a prize of CHF 1,000 for the best essay on the topic ‘Influence and Power’. This is a topic, not a title. Accordingly, authors are… Read More ›
CHF 1,000 for the best essay on the topic ‘Influence and Power’
The Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) and Big Data & Society (BD&S) intend to award a prize of CHF 1,000 for the best essay on the topic ‘Influence and Power’. This is a topic, not a title. Accordingly, authors are… Read More ›
Academic life in the measured university: pleasures, paradoxes and politics
The University of Sydney June 29th to July 1st 2016 Conference website: https://www.itl.usyd.edu.au/getinvolved/aic2016/submissions.htm Submissions To submit CLICK HERE Submissions are due by Friday 15 January 2016. Themes The conference welcomes submissions from staff and students (especially collaborations among students, and between staff… Read More ›
Imagining the Millennial Fascist
A really interesting post by David Banks, reflecting on the possible forms that fascism might take amongst millennials, with the particular experiences of social and political life they share as a generation: Barring some extreme changes in the political climate the… Read More ›
CfP: Surveillance and Security in the Age of Algorithmic Communication
Surveillance and Security in the Age of Algorithmic CommunicationAn IAMCR 2016 pre-conference University of Leicester 26 July 2016 Deadline for abstracts: (500 words): January 15, 2016 More information: http://iamcr.org/leicester2016/algorithmic-surveillance The call as pdf: http://iamcr.org/sites/default/files/AlgoSurveillancePreconferenceCfP_0.pdf The Snowden leaks have put mass surveillance… Read More ›
Calling PhDs & ECRs: @thesocreview conference funding competition is now open!
The Sociological Review has launched the next round of its support scheme for unfunded PhDs and ECRs. Find out more and apply here: We are pleased to announce our latest round of funding, supported by The Sociological Review Foundation. Funds… Read More ›
The Sociology of Christmas Lights
A great video by Les Back about the sociology of Christmas lights: Happy christmas!
New forms of cultural capital
A video and podcast from an interesting event at LSE, in which some of the team from the Great British Class Survey reflect on new forms of cultural capital: A panel of leading international experts discuss whether traditional forms of… Read More ›
Towards a sociology of human flourishing
From this interesting interview with Phil Gorski on The Imminent Frame: That would certainly be a hope of mine, and it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a great deal lately, whether there’s a limited kind of moral realism that we could… Read More ›
Against ‘hybrid beings’ as a way of understanding our entanglement with digital tech
My objection to the notion that we should understand the ubiquity of digital technology within person life in terms of ‘hybrid beings’ is a fundamentally methodological one. At the level of social theory, I find it relatively unobjectionable as an… Read More ›
“Liking” it on Facebook
by Javier de Rivera The “Like” is one of the most common and successful features on social networking sites. It was the hallmark of Facebook from the beginning, it is the main form of social interaction on Instagram, and Twitter has… Read More ›
Judith Butler on the Performativity of Assembly
A collection of lectures relating to her new book Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly.
CfP: Political Theory on Refugees
Call for Papers University of Augsburg, 17-18 November 2016 CONFERENCE: POLITICAL THEORY ON REFUGEES Working Groups: Democracy and Flight: Political Theories on Refugees and the transcultural and comparative political theory group Convenors: Sybille De La Rosa (Heidelberg University), Melanie Frank… Read More ›
CfP: A Celebration of Star Trek
Call for Papers and Topic Proposals: A Celebration of *Star Trek* (Apologies for cross-posting) Now accepting submissions and ideas for the fourth annual Pop Culture Colloquium at DePaul University in Chicago! The Media and Cinema Studies program, along with the… Read More ›
What are your favourite Sociology books of 2015?
Taking the lead from Brain Picking’s list of the best science books of 2015, we’d like to hear from you about your favourite Sociology books of the year. Let us know in the comments box or tweet them to me… Read More ›
CfP: The Lives and Deaths of Data
Open Track: The Lives and Deaths of Data Convenors: Sabina Leonelli and Brian Rappert, Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology & Exeter Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences (Egenis), University of Exeter, UK (see also the Exeter Data… Read More ›
Are we all Deleuzians now? Or, Why Susan Greenfield may be right, after all
Oxford neuropharmacologist Susan Greenfield has become notorious for arguing that the internet is warping our minds. Many people – myself included – regard her as a scaremonger. Nevertheless, in a recent history of neuroscience that I’ve been reading for other… Read More ›
Funded Places Available at the @BritSoci Conference
Important announcement via the BSA Sociologists Outside of Academia list: This year there are 40 places available for 40 BSA Concessionary members. 20 places are being funded by the BSA Support Fund and 20 places by SAGE Publications. Applicants must be paid up… Read More ›
CfP Everyday analytics: The politics and practices of self-monitoring track at 4S 2016
We welcome submissions to our open track on ‘everyday analytics’ at 4S/EASST, Barcelona, 2016 Track convenors: Kate Weiner, Catherine Will, Minna Ruckenstein, Christopher Till and Flis Henwood. Everyday analytics: The politics and practices of self-monitoring Self-monitoring is a pervasive… Read More ›
Digital Dilemmas: Transforming Gender Identities and Power Relations in Everyday Life
Digital Dilemmas: Transforming Gender Identities and Power Relations in Everyday Life Colloquium, 5-6th August, 2016, University of Waterloo, Canada Due date for abstract submission 31st January, 2016. The proliferation of digital technologies, virtual spaces, and new forms of engagement raise… Read More ›
In one’s hand: an extension of self and society
by Mike Duggan The materiality of things, both physically and symbolically, alongside our fetishisation of things is clear to see in our relationships with personal technologies. Simple observations of people waiting; on train platforms, for the bus or at the bar with… Read More ›
The Pleasures, Pain and Promise of Sociological Work Outside the Academy
by Keith Kahn-Harris The following is adapted from a talk given at the British Sociological Association SA Sociologists Outside Academia Group’s 10th Anniversary Event Being a sociologist working completely or (as in my case) partially outside academia is not an… Read More ›
Letter to Stella Creasy MP re: Syria
by Heena Khaled Dear Stella Creasy Around 2009 I met you for the first time at an event, and then you came and spoke at a women’s event I organised. I followed you ever since and you have been an… Read More ›
Conference: Social Media & Social Science Research Ethics
CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS Social Media & Social Science Research Ethics Location: 33 Finsbury Square, London. EC2A 1AG Date: Monday 21st of March, 2016 The Research Ethics Group of the Academy of Social Sciences and the NSMNSS network… Read More ›
towards a meta-critique of data science
In their new book Retrieving Realism, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor describe what they term a meta-critique. From loc 592: The idea of a metacritique here is, as the name suggests, to inquire into the basis of first- order critical… Read More ›
Beyond the ‘self-tracking’ craze: Towards a true technological enhancement of human intelligence
This mini-essay forms the basis of my contribution to the ‘self-tracking and the emergence of hybrid beings’ panel at the University of Liverpool’s Being Human Festival on 10 December 2015. The reader will see that I’m not especially enamored by… Read More ›
digital capitalism and the acceleration of bullshit
This is a slightly crude attempt to thematise something which I’ve been struggling to express for a while: has there been an acceleration of the rate at which bullshit emerges in the digital economy? Here’s an example of what I… Read More ›