By Jana Bacevic [These are my thoughts/notes for the “Practice of Social Theory“, which Mark Carrigan and I are running at the Department of Sociology of the University of Cambridge from 4 to 6 September, 2017]. Revival of theory? It… Read More ›
Archive for June 2017
Making an Impact with Social Media, July 5th in Manchester
Social media offers for exciting opportunities for generating impact and communicating research beyond the academy. However, 500 million tweets and 3 million blog posts that are generated in a single day, as well as over a billion websites, pose an obvious challenge: how… Read More ›
On the Spiralists
In a recent editorial in Current Sociology, Michael Burawoy warns about what he describes as the ascent of the spiralists. He finds these figures throughout the UC Berekely administration, accusing them of being “people who spiral in from outside, develop signature… Read More ›
CfP: ‘Social Research in a Sceptical Age’
The current climate of scepticism towards ‘experts’ has put many research practitioners and users on the defensive. Is it enough simply to assert the value of rigorous methods, or should we be checking, sharpening and improving our tools? If ‘post-truth’… Read More ›
CfP: Constitution: The Power of Shaping Forms of Life
4th International Colloquium in Social and Political Thought “Constitution: The power of shaping forms of life” November 2 & 3, 2017 Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile Keynote speakers: Joel Colón-Ríos (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) Fernando Atria (Universidad… Read More ›
Public intellectuals as guides to the political flux, Or, “who can tell us what the fuck is going on?”
In the last couple of days, I’ve been reading The Candidate by Alex Nunns. It’s a detailed and insightful account of Corbyn’s ascent to the leadership of the Labour party and the conditions which made this possible. After the election,… Read More ›
Ten Theses on Liberalism
When I was first exposed to liberalism as a political philosophy, I was told that its founders were Spinoza and Locke, two thinkers who have always struck me as having rather little in common, except some common foes — especially… Read More ›
The precursors to curation
While many see the term ‘curation’ as modish and vague, I see it as an important concept to make sense of how we can orientate ourselves within a changing cultural landscape. However I can sympathise with the thrust of these… Read More ›
“Help! Help! Here comes everybody!”: Social Media and Corbynism
How has social media contributed to the growing success of Corbynism? In asking this question, we risk falling into the trap of determinism by constructing ‘social media’ as an independent force bringing about effects in an otherwise unchanged world. This often… Read More ›
A Modest Proposal to Raise the Academic Game: The Google Test
I’ve always been a big supporter of bursaries to ‘English’ (understood as a transitive verb) the dissertations of students for whom English is a second language. These students often have interesting things to say and deserve to have their ideas… Read More ›
Digital media and ontological security
There’s an intriguing argument in The Mediated Construction of Social Reality, by Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, concerning our dependence upon digital media and how we respond to its failure. From loc 5527: We feel the costs viscerally: when ‘our’… Read More ›
The meaning of @realdonaldtrump
How significant can a tweet can be? We can point to isolated cases of individual tweets going viral, creating controversy and producing material outcomes in the world. But isolated tweets rarely have such significance. Instead, we need to look at… Read More ›
Trolling, public engagement and the sociology of knowledge
In recent months, I’ve become preoccupied by how we make sense of the experiences of academics being harassed or trolled when using social media. My initial interest in this was in my capacity as a trainer and consultant. One of… Read More ›
Deadline tomorrow: The Practice of Social Theory
First Cambridge summer school in social theory University of Cambridge, Department of Sociology, 4-6 September 2017 Conveners: Jana Bacevic (University of Cambridge) and Mark Carrigan (The Sociological Review) Passionate about social theory? Want to learn more about how it is… Read More ›
Against the ‘political rulebook’
Much of the reaction to Labour’s election success last week has been framed in terms of their ‘rewriting the rules’. One particularly explicit example of this can be seen in an article by Jonathan Freedland, an enthusiastic critic of Corbyn,… Read More ›
How Corbyn hacked the media
It’s conventional wisdom that Corbyn’s leadership campaign was the target of brutal coverage by the media. I was interested to learn in The Candidate, by Alex Nunns, that this wasn’t quite how the campaign itself saw the situation. Understanding why… Read More ›
Help us forge UK applied sociology
Help us forge UK applied sociology by Nick Fox and Marguerite Regan For the past 18 months, the British Sociological Association (BSA) group Sociologists outside Academia (SOA) has been focusing on the potential for careers working as applied or practical… Read More ›
When Tweets Turn Sour: Avoiding Legal Pitfalls on Social Media
When Tweets Turn Sour: Avoiding Legal Pitfalls on Social Media 2 hour masterclass, £12-13 per person When:6-8pm, Wednesday 28th June 2017 Where: NUJ,Headland House, 72 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NB Who for: Anyone using Twitter for PR, media/journalism or any… Read More ›
How do we explain the election of Donald Trump?
How do we explain the election of Donald Trump? Far too much of the media’s response to this question has been to take Trump’s account of his own powers at face value. This scion of the elite, who never felt… Read More ›
Political speeches, relational authoriality and fetishising ‘strong leadership’
The notion of relational authoriality, which consistency demands I acknowledge emerged in conversations with Jana Bacevic, conveys a relational realist perspective on the question of authorship. It rejects the notion of the liberal individual as the origin of a text… Read More ›
CfP: Japan in the Digital Age
Japan in the Digital Age Call for Papers for a one-day Symposium Saturday 28th October, 2017 The Shed, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester Keynote Speakers Prof. Ian Condry, Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mr. Kazuhito Gen-I (??… Read More ›
The New (Ab)Normal: The Cultural Politics of the New Authoritarianism
A free one-day event co-funded by Keele University and Cultural Politics. Tuesday 27th June, Keele University. Register here. Schedule 10am – 10.30am: Coffee 10.30am – 11.00am: Mark Featherstone (Keele University, Sociology) – Introduction: ‘The New (Ab)Normal: Sociology in Extremis’ 11.00am – 11.30am: Ronnie Lippens (Keele… Read More ›
Call for Chapters: Bourdieu, curriculum studies, education policy and reform
Co-editors James Albright (The University of Newcastle, Australia) and Shaun Rawolle (Deakin University) Revisiting the Principes pour une réflexion sur les contenus d’enseignment (Bourdieu, 1989) Call for chapters This proposed book aims to bring together scholars that take as… Read More ›
How Democracy Can Generate Progressive Collective Intelligence in Two Steps
First, citizens don’t vote for a representative simply based on who they judge as best matching their interests, but rather on who they judge as best matching their interests given the candidate’s chances of winning in the election. Second, the… Read More ›
Call for Participants: The Practice of Social Theory
First Cambridge summer school in social theory University of Cambridge, Department of Sociology, 4-6 September 2017 Conveners: Jana Bacevic (University of Cambridge) and Mark Carrigan (The Sociological Review) Passionate about social theory? Want to learn more about how it is… Read More ›
What would a materialist phenomenology of ‘post-truth’ look like?
That’s the question I’ve been asking myself when reading through two books by Nick Couldry in which he develops a materialist phenomenological approach to understanding social reality. The first is The Mediated Construction of Social Reality (with Andreas Hepp) and… Read More ›
Gender, sexuality and digital culture: A half day symposium at City, University of London, 20 June 2017
GENDER, SEXUALITY AND DIGITAL CULTURE A half day symposium at City, University of London, University Building B200, Northampton Square, EC1V 0HB June 20th 2.00-7.30pm //// Wine reception @7.30PM Keynotes: Winnie M Li and Rowan Ellis New and established scholars and… Read More ›
The Political Economy of Student Housing
In the last few years, I’ve been intrigued by how changes in student housing track a broader transformation of higher education. The obvious change in the UK has been in student numbers, with major implications for the demographics of cities… Read More ›
Call for Participants: The Practice of Social Theory
Conveners: Jana Bacevic (University of Cambridge) and Mark Carrigan (The Sociological Review) Passionate about social theory? Want to learn more about how it is created? Interested in seeing theory being made, rather than just read or applied? Apply to… Read More ›
Making an Impact with Social Media, July 5th in Manchester
Social media offers for exciting opportunities for generating impact and communicating research beyond the academy. However, 500 million tweets and 3 million blog posts that are generated in a single day, as well as over a billion websites, pose an obvious challenge: how… Read More ›