encourages you to capture ‘fringe-thoughts’: various ideas which may be by-products of everyday life, snatches of conversation overheard on the street, or, for that matter, dreams. Once noted, these may lead to more systematic thinking, as well as lend intellectual relevance to more directed experience [...] by keeping an adequate file and thus developing self-reflective habits, you learn how to keep your inner world awake. Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your files and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape.

Much of my initial fascination with this came from the extent to which it provided me with a theory of blogging. Or at the very least helped me articulate the way(s) in which blogging (which I’ve done for going on a decade now) was starting to intersect with my academic work (which only began in a meaningfully engaged way 5 years ago at the start of my part time PhD). In providing the conceptual resources to help me understand the emergent way in which I was using my blog to develop ideas, it also improved the way I was doing this by transforming it from a cluster of behaviours into a deliberate and self-aware practice. But it occurred recently that thinking about how I was using the tools also inculcated a sensitivity to what I was using the tools for which I’d previously lacked.

This lack might have just been my own idiosyncratic circumstances to a certain extent – I’ve had a meandering path through higher education and, while there are many things I’ve gained from the slightly eclectic range of influences I’ve been exposed to, I also sometimes worry that there’s a process of academic socialisation which other people have enjoyed which I’ve missed out on. Though this is probably something that most accidental sociologists feel at some point. But I think that’s perhaps an example of particular conditions leaving certain groups more sensitive to a broader trend. In this case the lack of attention to sociological craft within postgraduate education. Les Back and Nick Gane recently wrote a lovely paper exploring the notion of sociological craft and its relevance to the broader predicament facing sociology at the present juncture:

In the appendix of The Sociological Imagination, Mills develops this notion of the craft and its concern for questions of perspective and scale. In this part of the text, the craft refers to the imaginative labours that are needed in order for the promise the discipline – its capacity to connect biography to history – to be fulfilled. The craft is a way of thinking that brings into view relations between the individual and the social that have previously gone unnoticed, and does so by exercising an imagination that ‘is often successfully invited by putting together hitherto isolated items, by finding unsuspected connexions’ (1959:221). The craft is about imaginative methodological and theoretical work that puts the promise of sociology to work, and in so doing enables us to think about things, including our own lives, differently.

But there is, however, a further quality to Mills’ idea of the craft: ‘literary craftsmanship’. For sociology to be to be effective, especially beyond the academy, it must have literary ambitions. Mills’ assessment of the quality of the sociological writings of his time is damning. He argues that there is a ‘serious crisis in literacy’ in which sociologists are ‘very much involved’ (1959:239).

However I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the more quotidian sense of craft and particularly how it relates to postgraduate education. In a way this ties in rather nicely with the above paper: if postgraduate teaching is how sociology reproduces itself as a discipline then any role that a renewed focus on craft can play in actualising the promise of sociology must have pedagogical implications in relation to postgraduates (if not undergraduates as well). The other line of thought that’s been preoccupying me recently is routine and creativity. I’m fascinated by websites which chart the mundane daily routines of famous writers, artists and intellectuals: see for example here, here and here. My longstanding tendency towards obsessive introspection and self-analysis notwithstanding, this interest comes from some of the theoretical issues I’m interested in (particularly the relationship between habit and reflexivity) but it’s something which I’ve largely thought about in terms of how people organise and approach everyday life.

Increasingly though I’m seeing how useful a framework it is to think about craft – what do sociologists do in the deeply practical sense in which Mills discusses the question in the SI appendix? How do different sociologists approach similar tasks? How can an awareness of the different repertoires exhibited by sociologists factor into the development by PhD students and ECRs of their own distinctive style of sociological craft? Blogging gives a wonderful insight into the backstage of sociological craft and, not least of all because of the name of the site, I’d love to explore this on Sociological Imagination in some way. Thus far the best I can come up with is e-mail interviews though and that seems a bit crap really – any suggestions/thoughts/ideas are much appreciated.

Edit to add: I realised that I didn’t recognise the fact that some people are already producing  the sort of material I’m talking about here, with Patter being the most obvious example. I think the popularity of blogs like Patter and the Thesis Whisperer point to precisely the lack in postgraduate education which I point to above. I guess I’m suggesting two things in practice (a) somehow soliciting reflections on sociological craft so that a wide range of voices are represented (b) doing so with a specifically sociological focus – not for reasons of wilful insularity but because, for reasons which might make a good follow up post, I think a disciplinary focus is integral to ensuring that discussions of professional craft don’t become somewhat less interesting proffering of generic career advice

Reblogged from Amber at Warwick: academic technology:

What is amazing, and what confounds all efforts to cram Lowry into boxes marked “pessimism” or “nostalgia”, is that all these masses of people, delineated so simply and sparely, are electric with individual life. No two are alike. They are no more realistic, conventionally speaking, than the caricatures in a strip cartoon, yet each of them is alive. Try this as an experiment: look at the figures in these paintings with concentration for some minutes, then turn to look at actual people walking in the street. Suddenly they all look like Lowry people, each instinct with desire, goal, daydream or preoccupation.

Lowry was fascinated by scale in a peculiarly sociological sense of the term, with even the teeming crowds that populate his most famous scenes exhibiting an undeniable individuality but one framed and formed by the relational and institutional contexts which he also took such care to represent.

I’ve collected some of my favourites here.

This inaugural event for the BSA’s Digital Sociology Group brings together a diverse range
of speakers who, in a variety of ways, work within the nascent field of digital sociology.
Rather than proceed from a substantive account of what digital sociology is or could be,
this event seeks to address the question ‘what is digital sociology?’ through an open and
informal exploration of a broad range of exciting work being undertaken by sociologists
in the UK which could, in the broadest sense of the term, be characterised as ‘digital’. In
casting a spotlight on these projects in such a way the event aims to initiate an ongoing
dialogue about the continuities and discontinuities between these emergent strands of
digital activity, as well as the broader methodological and disciplinary questions which
they pose.

Speakers:
Kim Allen, Manchester Metropolitan University
Les Back, Goldsmiths, University of London
Ben Baumberg, University of Kent
Laura Harvey, Brunel University
Noortje Marres, Goldsmiths, University of London
Heather Mendick, Brunel University
Mark Murphy, University of Glasgow
Evelyn Ruppert, Goldsmiths, University of London
Helene Snee, University of Manchester

Delegate rates:
BSA Concessionary Member (student/unwaged/retired) £10
BSA Member £15
Non-member (student/unwaged/retired) £20
Non-member £25

Register at: http://portal.britsoc.co.uk/public/event/eventBooking.aspx?id=EVT10285
For administrative assistance contact: BSA Events Teamevents@britsoc.org.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 383 0839
Academic enquiries: Dr Emma Head e.l.head@keele.ac.uk

The BSA’s Teaching Group is pleased to announce a regional conference hosted by the School of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University. This event is aimed specifically at sociology teachers and will bring together a variety of guest speakers in an interesting and informative programme.

THEMES COVERED AT THE CONFERENCE WILL INCLUDE; DIGITAL METHODS, STUDENT TRANSITIONS FROM A LEVEL TO UNIVERSITY, SOCIAL THEORY, GENDER STUDIES, TEACHING SOCIOLOGY WITH BOXING IMAGERY, CRIMINOLOGY AND A SERIES OF MICRO-LECTURES FROM THE NEXT GENERATION OF RESEARCHERS.

Alongside this programme time will be allocated for networking opportunities over lunch and during an optional evening social event. There will also be an opportunity for feeding back to representatives of the BSA about the ways in which the organisation could help and support the teaching of sociology in schools and colleges more fully. 

Confirmed speakers:

Prof. John Holmwood (Nottingham University), Roger Hopkins-Burke (Author, An Introduction to Criminological Theory, principle lecturer, NTU), Dr. Jason Pandaya-Wood (Head of Sociology, NTU), Dr Emma Head (School of Sociology and Criminology, Keele University), Mark Carrigan (Department of Sociology, Warwick University), Helen Jones (Higher Education Academy), Dr Alex Channon (School of Education, University of Greenwich), Dr Julie Scott Jones & Dr John Goldring (Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr Christopher R. Matthews (School of Social Sciences, NTU).

Lunch will be provided, along with tea & coffee throughout the day.

Delegate fees:

BSA Member £40

BSA Teaching Group Member £50

Non-member £60

For further information and registration, please go to: http://portal.britsoc.co.uk/public/event/eventBooking.aspx?id=EVT10272

Email: bsatg@britsoc.co.uk or Tel: (0191) 383 0839 

For academic enquiries please contact: Dr Christopher R. Matthews, Nottingham Trent University

Email: christopher.matthews@ntu.ac.uk

http://www.crfr.ac.uk/eventsandtraining/training/masterclass-facet-methodolo
gy/

‘Facet methodology’ – is an inventive orientation to researching the
multidimensionality of everyday lives and relationships, which puts
researcher creativity and imagination at the heart of methodological
practice.

This masterclass will introduce the ethos of the approach and explore how it
can be practiced and what its uses might be.

Masterclass participants will be invited to engage in practical ways with
the approach, and to consider what it might offer for their own research
projects and plans.

A health warning! – facet methodology is an orientation, requiring
imagination and inventiveness. Please don’t expect to be given a set of
techniques or methodological rules that can be learned and applied!

About facet methodology
Facet methodology was developed collaboratively through the work of the
Realities programme at the National Centre for Research Methods, at the
Morgan Centre, University of Manchester.

We wanted an inventive approach that enlivened and animated our enquiries
into everyday life and relationships, and that promised methodological
rigour.

The approach was developed through our collaborative practice, in the doing
of research and analysis, rather than as a piece of armchair theorising or
methodologising.

We wanted a metaphor to articulate our research strategy, to ourselves and
others, and we lighted upon the visual metaphor of a cut gemstone. Our
approach envisions research fields as constructed through combinations and
constellations of facets as we might see in a gemstone, where facets refract
and intensify light, taking up the background, and creating flashes of depth
and colour as well as patches of shadow.

We found this a useful metaphor to think with, and to interpret the kinds of
practices we had been developing. In facet methodology, the gemstone is the
overall research question or problematic, and facets are conceived as
different methodological-substantive planes and surfaces, which are designed
to be capable of casting and refracting light in a variety of ways that help
to define the overall object of concern by creating flashes of insight.

Facets involve different lines of enquiry, and different ways of seeing. The
approach aims to create a strategically illuminating set of facets in
relation to specific research concerns and questions. The rigour of the
approach comes ultimately from researcher skill, inventiveness, creativity,
insight and imagination – in deciding how best to carve the facets so that
they catch the light in the best possible way.

You can read about facet methodology at:
http://www.pbs.plym.ac.uk/mi/pdf/8-02-12/MIO63Paper31.pdf

To reserve your place at this exciting workshop, please fill in the
registration form via the weblink below
http://www.crfr.ac.uk/eventsandtraining/training/masterclass-facet-methodolo
gy/

Post-structuralism exchanges the undesirable situation of lack of communication between the social sciences for the equally undesirable one where the internal logic of each subdiscipline is completely ignored. To be specific, there is little satisfaction with the present status quo where the boundaries between economics, political science, sociology and anthropology have become solid blinkers preventing interdisciplinary studies of social phenomena. But such compartmentalization will not be transcended by the facile and mindless abolition of the existing division of labour between disciplines.

[Instead we need] a painstaking process of theoretical labour that aims at building bridges between the various specializations. Such a strategy does not abolish social science boundaries: it simply aims at transforming them from impregnable bulwarks to transmission belts facilitating interdisciplinary research … what is badly needed today are more systematic efforts towards the creation of a theoretical discourse that would be able to translate the language of one discipline into that of another. Such an interdisciplinary language would not only facilitate communication among the social science disciplines, it would also make it possible to incorporate effectively into the social sciences insights achieved in philosophy, psychoanalysis or semiotics.

Post-structuralism, by completely side-stepping this difficult but necessary theoretical task, simply proposes the free and indiscriminate mixture of concepts and ideas derived from philosophy, literature, sociology, psychoanalysis, semiotics and elsewhere. This rejection of boundaries, in combination with the neglect of micro, meso and macro levels of analysis, of social hierarchies, and of the agency-structure distinction, quite predictably leads to a hotch-potch that is neither good philosophy nor good literature, nor yet good sociology, psychoanalysis or semiotics.

[This leads to] the present incredible situation where anything goes, and where complex macro phenomena are reductively explained in terms of signs, texts, the unconscious or what have you. As far as I am concerned, such crude exercises constitute a relapse to pre-Durkheimian attempts at explaining social phenomena in terms of instincts, race, climate or geography. The only difference is that today’s postmodernists draw their reductive explanations from psychoanalysis and linguistics rather than from biology and geography.

Sociological Theory: What went Wrong?: Diagnosis and Remedies, By Nicos Mouzelis

I rather like the ‘conceptual pragmatism’ advocated by Mouzelis. As I understand his arguments, he is proposing that any adequate body of sociological theory (as opposed to social theory) must be capable of facilitating communication and translation between paradigms. Sociological theory which is geared towards ‘building bridges’ can sustain productive conversations across the boundaries of substantive intellectual differences precisely because it provides a rich and multifaceted language within and through which a whole range of divergent substantive claims about the social can be expressed.

If there are common points of reference then sociological theory can provide the sort of intellectual topology (i.e. mapping continuities and discontinuities between different approaches and theories in a relational way) which is a precondition for progressive debate about theoretical topics. But without such common points of reference – if  conceptual idioms like structure/agency or macro/micro which recurrently emerge in practical settings are either ignored or rejected in favour of ‘transcendence’ – it becomes difficult for sociological theory to perform this function beyond those who are, in some sense, ‘internal’ to the approach.

Edited to add: I’m fascinated by theorists who can incorporate a diverse range of perspectives within the same over-arching framework. This is why I was drawn to Richard Rorty even though I think, in retrospect, his project was a regressive one. It’s also more latterly why I’m drawn to realist social theory in spite of the (largely though not entirely unfair) perception it suffers under as being more concerned with scholastic critique than practical rapprochement. I’m not convinced theoretical debates can be adequately understood without an understanding of what (as some more or less stable issue which is relatively autonomous from the debate itself) is at stake in the respect positions being staked out. This minimal claim is perfectly compatible with a sociological approach to the history of ideas, as the ‘what’ does not need to be a timeless historical question, only something which has recurrently occurred with sufficient frequency to allow it to be treated in abstraction from the substantive disputes. 

The project has an active website (http://www.celebyouth.org/ ) and twitter account (@CelebYouthUK) and the team regularly post blogs about the project and related issues – past posts have included an analysis of David Cameron’s ‘Aspiration Nation’ speech, a piece on Post-feminism and Olympic Role Models, and several on methodological dilemmas in youth research.

The research team are now welcoming guest contributions to the website from other people who are interested or working on topics related to the project. This could be work on celebrity and popular culture; young people’s aspirations and educational transitions; inequalities of class and gender; education policy; and/or the links between these.

We welcome guest contributions on these topics from anyone – from students, doctoral researchers, teachers, and academics – the only condition is that they are original and that what you write needs to fit with the broadly sociological, feminist and critical approach of the website.

If you would like to write for us please take a look at our website for more details http://www.celebyouth.org/write-for-celebyouth/ and get in touch with Heather Mendick  (heathermendick@yahoo.co.uk ) to discuss your ideas.

Many thanks in advance

Kim Allen (Manchester Metropolitan University), Heather Mendick and Laura Harvey (Brunel University)

By maintaining its specialized logic and orientation it is capable of providing a set of conceptual tools that can operate as a theoretical lingua franca, as a flexible vocabulary with no foundationalist pretensions, which can help sociologists establish bridges between their own and other disciplines, as well as between competing social science paradigms. This is to say that sociological theory should not aim at the establishment of some sort of monolithic paradigmatic unity, but at strengthening the present pluralism by removing the obstacles that are a hindrance to open-ended communication between the differentiated subdisciplines or paradigms.

Pg 9, Sociological Theory: What went Wrong?: Diagnosis and Remedies, By Nicos Mouzelis