Archive for January 2017
Academic exceptionalism and the black-boxing of academic labour
This introduction to Conflict in the Academy, by Marcus Morgan and Patrick Baert, nicely captures something I’ve been preoccupied by recently. From loc 63: we would like to suggest that tired clichés of ‘ivory towers’ and ‘dreaming spires’, or even… Read More ›
Steve Fuller’s Guide for Teaching Social Theory
January seems to bring out the social theorist in me. My last direct contribution to this topic was around this time last year, when a conversation with a graduate student at Warwick inspired me to propose a guide to reading… Read More ›
Was Sloterdijk an early originator of contemporary right populism?
Reading the excellent Selected Exaggerations, a book of interviews with Peter Sloterdijk, I was struck by his remarks about taxation and the state in an interview from 2001. He bemoans the punitive taxation he claims exists in Germany, arguing that it reflects a… Read More ›
An interview with Jamie Woodcock about Working the Phones
Find out more about the book here How did call centre emerge and proliferate? Would it be a mistake to see this as solely a matter of technological feasibility? The growth of call centres in the UK is a result… Read More ›
(Un)Making Europe: Capitalism, Solidarities, Subjectivities
“(Un)Making Europe: Capitalism, Solidarities, Subjectivities” 13th European Sociological Conference European Sociological Assocation Athens, Greece, 29 August to 1 September 2017 http://www.europeansociology.org./conferences/13th-conference-2017/ Abstract submission via https://www.conftool.pro/esa2017/ Abstract submission deadline: February 1, 2017 Invited speakers include David Harvey, Yanis Varoufakis, Donatella della … Read More ›
CfP: The Digital Everyday Conference
The Digital Everyday: Exploration or Alienation? Centre for Digital Culture at King’s College London CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS This international conference aims at exploring the digital everyday, understood as the transformation of everyday life practices brought about by digital technology. From… Read More ›
BREAKING NEWS: Social Science Faculty at Humboldt-University Berlin occupied!
Well, this is not breaking news. The occupation of the Social Science Faculty of the HU-Berlin started last Wednesday, 18 January, but I only found out about it today. Although I work in an institute which is part of the… Read More ›
The self-importance of researchers
This interesting aside in Jamie Woodcock’s superb Working The Phones is worthy of further discussion. From loc 2698: Researchers often attribute a level of importance to their own research that is not shared by others, assuming that because they spend so… Read More ›
The lost socio-technical architecture of qualitative research
I’ve long been fascinated by how rarely qualitative researchers talk about the equipment they use in their research. I love it when I see exceptions to these trend, such as Les Back’s chapter in this volume, because they highlight the tools… Read More ›
CfP: Social Media Technology Conference & Workshop
*Social Media Technology Conference & Workshop* Call for Papers, Workshops and Panels October 5-6, 2017 Howard University Washington, D.C. *Social Media: Culture and Identity* The 7th Annual Social Media Technology Conference & Workshop is a two-day intensive conference combining panel… Read More ›
The ontology of data, the ideology of data
In a recent post, I expressed my discomfort with how Nick Srnicek invokes the notion of data as a raw material in his Platform Capitalism. In a footnote on loc , he offers a Marxist justification for this use: I… Read More ›
Engines of Knowledge: The Museum and the Exhibit
by Hamish Robertson This was originally posted on Discover Society My focus is on what I have termed, after Ian Hacking’s idea, engines of knowledge. This notion of engines includes not just tools and methods but institutions and processes that we… Read More ›
Lost governments of fragile reason
by Deborah Talbot In the eve of the US election result in which Senator John Kerry lost to George Bush in 2004, Jonathan Raban wrote the following in his essay America’s Reality Check: “More than any other election in recent… Read More ›
An overview of creative research methods
A lecture by Helen Kara, author of the excellent Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences.
On Teaching Theory
This short exchange with Michael Burawoy offers some thought-provoking reflections on teaching social theory. He identifies the major traditions of teaching theory within American sociology, before outlining his own ethnographic approach: The Survey: surveying extracts from a comprehensive range of social theorists, each… Read More ›
The Happy Unemployment of Horses
Embed from Getty Images From Peter Sloterdick’s Selected Exaggerations, loc Incidentally, there are almost as many horses today as there were in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, but they have all been reassigned. They are almost all leisure horses,… Read More ›
Deadline soon! @TheSocReview ECR Essay Competition
We invite essays exploring the future of sociology in its relationships with other cognate disciplines such as anthropology and geography. Echoing The Sociological Review’s Manifesto, we seek to encourage reflections on ‘what could be thought differently, and how that creates… Read More ›
The turn to end all turns
The upwards trajectory of publication poses an obvious problem for the aspiring academic. It is one familiar from other fields of cultural production. How to be heard above the din? If ever more publications are being produced each year, commanding ever… Read More ›
Ford Motor Company Sociological Department & English School
Thanks to Hamish Robertson for pointing out this fascinating resource: With the success of the Ford Model T after its introduction in 1908, Ford Motor Company became the leading manufacturer of automobiles in the world. By 1914, the integration of… Read More ›
China’s Millionaire Migration
An interesting documentary about the migration of wealthy Chinese to Vancouver:
CfP: Migration and Crisis in Europe
Sociology 2018 Special Issue — Still time to submit! Sociology’s 2018 special issue will be on the theme of Migration and Crisis in Europe. The issue will be guest edited by Nick Dines, Nicola Montagna and Elena Vacchelli, all at… Read More ›
The Association of Internet Researchers now has a YouTube channel
Something likely to become a great resource for those interested in internet studies: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLV5SuNigyjRtNR94MO2DQA
Is democracy incoherent?
Watch more videos on iai.tv
All the open culture you could ever need
A fabulous roundup from the always brilliant Open Culture project: Free eBooks Free Audio Books Free Online Courses Free Movies Free Language Lessons Free Textbooks
“Brassing off” Against Post-Democratic Non-Citizenship. Or, What to Learn from the Second Line Culture of New Orleans
By Lambros Fatsis Following the Brexit referendum and the recent US presidential election, our current political and socio-cultural climate has often been described as quintessentially ‘post-truth’. This newly coined term, much like the phenomenon it describes, rapidly gained traction as… Read More ›
Open Access Archive SocArXiv Launches
A very exciting announcement: SocArXiv, the open archive of social science, has just launched in beta version. Led by a steering committee of sociologists and librarians, SocArXiv is a free, open access repository for prepublication versions of papers. Created as a… Read More ›
Metrics and the death of imagination
In John Thompson’s Merchants of Culture, there’s an interesting remark about the structural position of first time authors which I think has wider purchase. From pg 200: Ironically, in a world preoccupied by numbers, the author with no track is… Read More ›
The Reality of Homelessness in Cardiff
A moving video produced by a photojournalism student. Read more about it here.
The Silicon Valley of Hardware
Future Cities, a full-length documentary strand from WIRED Video, takes us inside the bustling Chinese city of Shenzhen. We examine the unique manufacturing ecosystem that has emerged, gaining access to the world’s leading hardware-prototyping culture whilst challenging misconceptions from the… Read More ›