Earlier this week, it was reported in a number of outlets that Tesco has been using armbands to monitor employees at a distribution center, enabling management to track moment to moment activity in a way which was previously impossible: The… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘Politics’
The Bulgarian Winter: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
On Wednesday, 20th February 2013, the Bulgarian government headed by Boyko Borissov has deposited its resignation. What happened? What comes next? Read anthropologist Mariya Ivancheva’s analysis below. (The article is reprinted with author’s permission from Criticatac, a Romanian left-wing comment and analysis web… Read More ›
The social scientists behind Obama’s victory
This year’s USA presidential elections were very exciting and contested, but perhaps less obviously ground breaking than the previous ones. However, important structural shifts have happened in the way in which the campaign is conceived, organised, and carried out. In… Read More ›
The Libertarian Con?
Warning: if you regard yourself as a ‘libertarian’, in the American sense of the term, it might be best if you avoid reading this strident critique of the role libertarianism is coming to play in contemporary political culture. But we’re… Read More ›
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing(?): On Being a Not So Dumb Blonde
Since returning northwards, and knowing that it would only be temporary, I’ve made the decision to try and get out into the Northumberland countryside as much as possible. It’s not going well, largely owing to my reluctance to leave my… Read More ›
The Counterfeiters (part 2)
Too much for sale? The myth of Europe is a Greek invention and so is tragedy and drama. What follows, amounts to no more than dramaturgical field-notes from the country’s trials, tribulations as well as its responsibilities and duties, not… Read More ›
The Counterfeiters (part 1)
‘As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as individual, nor I against them. They are “only doing their duty”, as the saying goes. Most of… Read More ›
Greece vs. Germany or “The bailout game”: Politics and Football in the Greek media
The Greek MYPLACE team at Panteion University of Social And Political Sciences present their latest blog on the political background to Greece’s Euro 2012 football quarter final against Germany. For more information on the MYPLACE project, visit the project’s website HERE or the project’s blog HERE. You… Read More ›
Review of ‘Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism’ by Sarah Sobieraj
In her introduction to Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism (NYU Press, 2011), sociologist and Tufts University professor writes, ‘I thought this would be a book about how activist groups use presidential elections as moments of political opening, but… Read More ›
Cuts, Fees, and Solidarity: Why the Telegraph’s Janet Daley was wrong to say the demonstration was “self-serving”
The morning after the demonstration in London against education cuts the Today programme on BBC Radio Four carried an interview with two newspaper columnists – John Harris of The Guardian, and Janet Daley of The Daily Telegraph. A question posed… Read More ›
‘The End of the Public University in England’
I graduated from the University of Manchester in 1987 with no debt. I paid no fees and received a maintenance grant to earn a degree in Politics and Modern History. If my seventeen year old son were to follow in… Read More ›
“An Area of No Man’s Land”: Policing Protest in Australia’s Capital
Canberra, as the home of Federal Parliament since 1927, has been a focal point for demonstrations and other forms of political protest, primarily on the lawns outside Parliament House (and Old Parliament House). Particularly since the political and cultural radicalism… Read More ›
Lost Generation? Paying more for less
With customers queuing to get into HE, it would be irrational from a business point of view for government not to raise fees as high as it can. It is therefore almost inevitable that – urged on by the Russell… Read More ›
Welcome to the Sociological Imagination
This magazine stands as a consciously tentative and perhaps fleeting first step towards a much larger and longer term aim. A vague idea became a concrete plan as a result of a BSA funded day school (The Politics of Sociology) which took place at the University of Warwick in January 2010.