What does social media mean for academic writing? Most answers to this question focus on how such platforms might constrain or enable the expression of complex ideas. For instance, we might encounter scepticism that one could express conceptual nuance in 140 characters or an enthusiasm for blogging as offering new ways to explore theoretical questions beyond the confines of the […]
Month: April 2017
Making Sociology Public by Lambros Fatsis Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang Filling The Void by Marcus Gilroy-Ware What is the Future? By John Urry The Existentialist Moment by Patrick Baert Slowness by Milan Kundera The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson The Making of the Indebted Man by Maurizio Lazzarato Grand Hotel Abyss by Stuart […]
Though we are all related through common ancestry Still, some of us are fated by where or what we be. We could not choose our birthplace, our gender, race, or creed We’re praiséd, loved, or hated for every word or deed. Because we all are sisters or brothers, through and through; No one should try […]
In Solar, by Ian McEwan, we encounter the weary figure of Michael Beard, the nobel laureate and serial womaniser who has long lived off his early contribution to theoretical physics. By the time he approaches his 60s, he is a chaotic and directionless man, nonetheless ubiquitously affirmed within the academy and beyond: He held an honorary […]
I described myself as an ‘academic technologist’ for a number of years. During my part-time PhD, I’d drifted into a number of roles which felt connected but which were difficult to summarise: training people to use NVIVO, writing digital scholarship resources, advising on CAQDAS strategy for research projects, running workshops about social media and maintaining social media feeds. […]
Marshall was a jaytalker and jaywriter, which, for him, meant “to talk back; to talk against the lights; to talk outside the designated lines; to talk like our great American Blue Jays, small birds who emit loud and raucous cries that no one can ignore.” http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3184-andy-merrifield-living-for-the-city
In his detailed study of Sartre’s rise to prominence as an authoritative public intellectual, Patrick Baert argues that the general intellectualism embodied by Sartre depended upon social conditions which no longer obtain. Such intellectuals “address a wide range of subjects without being experts as such” and speak “at, rather than with, their audience” (pg. 185). […]
From What is the Future? by John Urry, loc 2554-2570: This car-based suburbanization is neither natural nor inevitable, and in the US partly stems from a ‘conspiracy’. Between 1927 and 1955, General Motors, Mack Manufacturing (trucks), Standard Oil (now Exxon), Philips Petroleum, Firestone Tire & Rubber and Greyhound Lines conspired to share information, investments and ‘activities’ […]
What is a wonk? It’s a deceptively simple question which it’s worth us attending to. This is the answer given in an excellent Baffler essay by Emmett Rensin: What, after all, is a wonk? It is not the same thing as an expert, although those are tedious as well. In a 2011 interview with Newsweek, […]
In recent years, calls for a reconsideration of critique, its place and value, have multiplied. The proposition that critique has run out of steam took on a new urgency with the vote for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. The doxa of progressive academia has found itself repudiated by these events, as conceptions of […]
At a recent symposium I saw Ben Williamson give an excellent lecture about the rapidly developing field of educational data science and how it is reshaping educational practice. Some of the material is summarised here for those interested. It was a really broad overview of these developments and the theoretical challenges we face in trying to make […]
This is the fifth of Walter Benjamin’s thirteen rules for writing. I would love to know more about what this meant in practice to him. How often did he record his ideas? Where did he record them? How did their quantity and quality wax and wane in different circumstances? My conviction that blogging constitutes a […]
Such a great project. Going to try and think of something to contribute to this: All sociologists write stories – Game & Metcalfe, Passionate Sociology The relationship between fiction and sociology is as old as the discipline itself. Sociological fiction is receiving increasing attention of late – see The Sociological Review’s blog series on sociology […]
A really fascinating discussion between Kristi Winters and The Wooly Bumblebee (HT Philip Moriarty). The latter’s experience could be seen as a model for de-radicalisation in the more toxic spaces within social media. An important reminder that platform incentives might encourage this behaviour but they don’t necessitate it. Furthermore, just because someone has come to act a given way […]
Postmodernity. Second modernity. Network Society. Late modernity. Liquid modernity. Such concepts have dominated social thought in recent decades, with a bewildering array of claims about social change and its implications. But what do we mean by ‘social change’? How do we establish that such change is taking place? What does it mean to say that […]
The term ‘curation’ has got a bad press in recent years. Or rather the use of the term beyond the art world has. To a certain extent I understand this but I nonetheless always feel the need to defend the term. There are a few reasons for this: In a context of cultural abundance, selection […]
Manchester Digital Laboratory Thursday 8th June 2017 09.00-17.00 The Sociological Review Foundation is delighted to announce our forthcoming workshop using graphic novel methods to present social research. We invite applications to take part in a Graphic Novel Workshop with Tony Lee. If your research involves incorporating graphic methods or you are simply interested in doing […]
