What does ‘public sociology’ entail in a world of facebook, twitter, youtube, slideshare, soundcloud, pinterest and wordpress? What affordances and constraints do these tools entail for the task of “taking knowledge back to those from whom it came, making public issues out of private troubles, and thus regenerating sociology’s moral fibre”? What implications do these tools have […]
Month: December 2013
17 reasons why you should blog about your research The Sociology of Intellectual Faddishness or, Why it’s unfair to blame everything on Foucault How to write 1000 words a day and not go bat shit crazy (within the first two weeks) “Where the fuck do they get their shit from!?”: Reality Television, Austerity Politics and Digital Public Sociology CFP: […]
There’s a particularly incisive rehearsal in the Guardian of what has become a well established critique of TED. There’s a lot of this I agree with but I nonetheless find the general thrust of the argument really problematic: So what is TED exactly? Perhaps it’s the proposition that if we talk about world-changing ideas enough, […]
I’m planning to write a paper next year for submission to this special issue on the sociology of everyday life. One aspect of the paper is an argument that Margaret Archer’s recent work offers a rich set of conceptual resources for understanding everyday life. Another will be an attempt to address confusions about voluntarism and […]
This may be a case of my drawing connections between things which are unconnected. Nonetheless, I keep noticing evidence (confirmation bias at work?) of a growing hostility towards charities in the UK. Those ‘greedy’ charity shops, with their greedy executives, scaremongering, political bias and radicalism. My claim here is entirely impressionistic but I’m sure I […]
If one stands back from the day-to-day demands of professional routine, it becomes clear that an intellectual trajectory is not organised in advance, we do not begin by surveying the intellectual ground before deciding upon a line of enquiry; rather, as Hans-Georg Gadamer might put it, we fall into conversation; our starting points are accidental, […]
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these […]
There are many reasons not to listen to this nonsense. The glaring philosophical contradictions, the creepily messianic tones of his speech, the self-indulgent and naive politics underlying it. But as an emerging managerial discourse, upon which this man has apparently established a large consultancy and made a lot of money, it absolutely fascinates me. What […]
A very interesting post here: There’s an internet rule called 1%-9%-90% which states 1% create, 9% comment/interact/curate, 90% consume. Let me borrow this construct and apply it specifically to web publishing: WordPress is for the 1%. There are content creators who want their own dry piece of land, a full featured CMS and total control over their […]
I just tried using Medium for the first time and I loved it. I suspect I won’t be alone in this. Here’s a few reasons why I think it’s a good fit for academic blogging: The interface is lovely. It does exactly what it claims to do and adopts an aesthetic which foregrounds what you’re writing. […]
What is behind the rise of the working poor? As James Plunkett says, it makes for a lousy whodunit. No single factor is to blame. Much as you might want to point the finger at the government, at least some of the evidence shows that these are long-term trends that have been gathering pace for […]
CALL FOR PAPERS Death Online Research Symposium Wednesday April 9th – Thursday April 10th, 2014 Durham University Centre for Death and Life Studies, Durham University, UK. Keynote speaker: Professor Tony Walters, Director of the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath, UK. As digital media have become an integral part of our everyday life, […]
I was put here to do something before I’m lying in that casket I’d be lying on the beat if I said I didn’t know what that is The world’s a stage and we play a character, I found him It took me twenty-something years and a bunch of shitty soundchecks
Sexuality Summer School 26 – 30 May: Queer Anatomies Public Events Monday 26 May – 12-2 – lunchtime public lecture: Professor Jasbir Puar (Rutgers) Monday 26 May – 6-8 – film screening at Cornerhouse: United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (2012) followed by Q&A with director Jim Hubbard and Dr.Monica Pearl (Manchester) Tuesday 27 May – 5-7 – public lecture: Professor Valerie Traub (Michigan and Simon Visiting Professorship, Manchester). Co-sponsored by SEXGEN […]
(video, as well as title, via Jezebel)
Social and Political Critique in the Age of Austerity A one day workshop at Keele University 10.30am-6pm, Wednesday 12th February, 2014 This one day workshop is devoted to the discussion of critical politics in the contemporary age of austerity. Following the 2007 global economic crash, which led to a raft of government bank bail outs […]
The next meeting of the Quantified Self Research Network will take place on the 25th March at the University of Warwick from 1pm to 6pm. It’s an informal seminar to present work in progress and is open to all. If you would like to contribute then please send a short abstract and bio to mark@markcarrigan.net by February 1st. We use ‘quantified […]
Are you a PhD student or Early Career Researcher doing work in digital sociology? The BSA Digital Sociology Group has organised a PhD/ECR Workshop where a limited number of participants can get feedback on their work from peers and established academics in a supportive environment. The event will take place between 11am to 4pm on February 19th at […]
Print is predictable and impersonal, conveying information in a mechanical transaction with the reader’s eye. Handwriting, by contrast, resists the eye, reveals its meaning slowly, and is as intimate as skin. – Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being, pg 12
In this lecture Heidegger’s philosophical claims come to be made much more explicitly, leaving me on more comfortable territory than in previous lectures. In order to proceed with the broader project of the series, he turns to the question “what is this anyway – to form an idea, a representation?” (pg 39). In addressing this […]
