I was surprised how much I liked Gone Girl. I liked the film so much I went out and bought the book. I’ve been ever more surprised by how interesting I’ve found the contrast between the two. One interesting difference between the film and the book were the different ways […]
I just had my card stopped by HSBC for the second time in a month and the seventh or eighth (I’ve genuinely lost count) time this year. As with previous occurrences, I spend twenty minutes on hold and go through a tedious security check process to confirm that my last […]
Prof. Margaret Archer will give a guest-talk at Cardiff University on an oft-neglected aspect of critical realism. She will address how groups and group relations are transformed in important respects in the course of pursuing and introducing social transformations. Her talk draws empirical illustrations from the contestation of intellectual property […]
The second review of my Asexuality and Sexual Normativity just came out in Psychology & Sexuality. You can read it here, if you have access. The first review was in the LSE Review of Books a few months ago.
My course at Nat Cen has been moved to December. You can book online here. Given the increasing pressure to demonstrate the impact of social research, it is inevitable that researchers are looking towards the opportunities offered by social media. This one day course offers an accessible introduction to the use […]
In the second Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Emma Uprichard (Associate Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies) discusses Complex Temporal Ontologies and Method: This paper reflects on the methodological challenge of applying complexity theory to study social systems. More specifically, the focus is on the problem of capturing complex […]
After far too many years living in Coventry, I’ve become slightly fascinated by its modern history. Given how grim the place feels and how disparagingly its regarded in popular culture, it was jarring to discover that the city had once been seen as the ‘Phoenix rising from the ashes': a great urban […]
In a recent New Statesman article, Grayson Perry reflected on what he termed ‘Default Man’ (“white, middle-class, heterosexual men, usually middle-aged”) and the power he wields within our putatively meritocratic social order. Perry makes the important point about how ‘identity’ tends to be seen as something marginal, in contrast to the […]
Walking home in the rain earlier today, I encountered a very fluffy and very wet cat sitting unhappily outside someone’s front door. Upon getting my attention, the cat insistently tried to lead me towards the front door in the hope that I would open it. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed […]
This looks interesting: Call for Papers If not now, when? Feminism in contemporary activist, social and educational contexts Political and socio-economic developments in recent years have created new opportunities and new battlegrounds for feminism, with women taking to the streets and demonstrating against the status quo, corruption, sexism, austerity and […]
My course at Nat Cen has been moved to December. You can book onlinehere. Given the increasing pressure to demonstrate the impact of social research, it is inevitable that researchers are looking towards the opportunities offered by social media. This one day course offers an accessible introduction to the use […]
I don’t usually post flyers for paid courses (unless I’m giving them) but this looks great and I’m almost certainly going to book a place: Spectacle, an award winning independent television production company specialising in documentary, community-led investigative journalism and participatory media, offers affordable weekend training in *Digital Video Production for […]
On December 4th 2014 The University of Birmingham will be hosting the second Mobile Apps in Research Summit. We are excited to announce that delegate registration is now open. This year’s Summit includes some discussion-based workshop sessions, by popular demand, as well as presentations, panels and networking. Programme Welcome Panel: […]
In this very useful paper Dave Elder-Vass observes that the concept of ‘social institution’ is almost as diverse as that of ‘social structure': The concept of social institution is almost as diverse in its referents as the concept of social structure. The Collins Dictionary of Sociology, for example, begins its […]
The concept of ‘social structure’ is central to sociological inquiry yet there is little agreement about what it means. This matters because social explanation hinges on what we take ‘structure’ to be and a lack of ubiquity about the term helps fuel the disagreements and confusions which are already rife […]
The notion of ‘interaction’ is well understood. Interactions are part of our everyday life. Sometimes these interactions leave us thinking about them afterwards (“what did he mean when he said that?”, “why is she always like that?” etc) and sometimes this leaves us thinking about interaction in a second-order way […]
I just registered for this superb looking seminar at Warwick on November 9th. There’s a very limited number of places still available. These are the speakers: DR JOHN SMITH (Department of Education and Community Studies, University of Greenwich) Title: Why Qualitative Complexity? DR NOORTJE MARRES (Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London; […]
In the first Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, 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. In this presentation, I introduce the idea of philosophical sociology […]
