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  • What’s the difference between academia and politics?

    In his wonderful memoir, Adults In The Room, Yanis Varoufakis reflects on the frustrations of politics and how they compare to academia. From loc 5504: Possibly because of my academic background, this was the Brussels experience I least expected and found most frustrating. In academia one gets used to having one’s thesis torn apart, sometimes with little decorum;…

  • Elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy

    What does it mean for policy to be insulated from politics? That’s the question we ultimately confront when investigating the putative depoliticisation of the economy. Matters which should be publicly resolved, through organised processes of contestation, instead get decided privately. We can cite examples of such transitions, consider whether they embody a broader tendency and…

  • What will Macron be like in government?

    I happened to be reading this page of Yanis Varoufakis’ political memoir a few moments before Macron’s near certain victory was announced. From loc 3398: Emmanuel Macron listened actively and engaged directly, his eyes radiant and ready to display his approval or disagreement. The fact that he had good English and a grasp of macroeconomics…

  • What does distraction mean for political theory and political philosophy?

    Soon after becoming Finance Minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis found himself surrounded by civil servants whose loyalties he could not assume and staff parachuted in by a political party with which he had little prior affiliation. In his political memoir, Adults In The Room, he recounts his impulse to find “a minder whose loyalties would not be…

  • The technocratic oath

    In his political memoir, Adults In The Room, Yanis Varoufakis recounts a meeting with Larry Summer which took place in April 2015. Only months into his tenure as Finance Minister, he looked to this architect of the neoliberal world order for support as hostilities with European leaders over Greece’s fiscal future rapidly intensified. Coming straight…

  • How can Arendt and Heidegger help us think about distraction?

    In his Debating Humanity, Daniel Chernilo compares the approaches taken by Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt to the question of thinking. Both began with the philosophical tradition’s opposition between thinking and action: in this sense it implies withdrawal in some sense, relative to a world of activity. However Heidegger saw this thinking as an activity for the chosen few.…

  • The Politics of Agency

    Ever since I was a philosophy student, I’ve been interested in how we conceptualise individuals and groups. The two are connected in my mind because, if groups are composed of individuals, our concept of individuals is going to condition our concept of groups and vice versa. However discussion at this level of abstraction can seem…

  • Anticipatory Urgency

    Earlier this morning, I found myself impatiently waiting in my local petrol station to purchase a drink before I went swimming. The woman in front me in the queue was rather slow. Initially seeming surprised that money would be required for the transaction, she proceeded to initiate an entirely different process to locate her coins after handing over the…

  • The transformation of academic writing and the challenge of ephemera

    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…

  • things I’ve been reading recently #34

    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…

  • Anthem for a Planet’s Children

    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…

  • The Jeremy Hunt Rhyming Song

  • The ennui of the academic celebrity

    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…

  • What is a research technologist?

    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 Berman on Jaytalking

    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

  • Will social media lead to the return of the general intellectual?

    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).…

  • The Conspiracy of Cars

    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?

    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,…

  • “We are already in a position where we have to engage with digital media”

  • Call for Papers: The Journal of Repressive Social Theory

    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…

  • Too busy to care for your cat?

  • Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens

    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…

  • Sociological Fiction Zine

    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…

  • “I was being a complete asshole to people for nothing more than scoring points to look good inside an echo chamber”

    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…

  • Social Morphogenesis: Five Years of Inquiring Into Social Change

    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…

  • In defence of ‘curation’

    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…

  • Using graphic novels to communicate your research

    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…

  • How to attribute authorship on @soc_imagination?

    I just came across this student essay in which a blog post written by Les Back was attributed to me. This isn’t the first time it’s happened and I’m unsure how to respond to it. The backlist of posts on Sociological Imagination is sprawling by this point, numbering in the low thousands. Most of these…

  • music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#25)

  • “A new kind of intellectual”: Pierre Bourdieu’s tribute to Michel Foucault

    After Michel Foucault died in 1984 at the age of fifty-seven, Pierre Bourdieu wrote a tribute in Le Monde, reflecting on his life and what could be learned from it. Bourdieu attributed to his former colleague at the Collège de France a great consistency in his intellectual work, much more than is often assumed: The consistency of an…

  • The Polysemic University

    From Making Sociology Public, by Lambros Fatsis, pg 240: Having already introduced Cardinal Newman’s ivory tower conception of the university, and Minister Humboldt’s equally idealistic depiction of it as a hub of culture and academic freedom, Barnett’s (2013) anthology of epithets, each of which furnishes 240 a different vision of and for the university, is…

  • Persistance, Searchability and Incivility

    This essay on ‘the cult of cruelty’ has some interesting points to make about the role of what danah boyd calls persistence and searchability in facilitating incivility online. It makes it possible to trawl through someone’s activity, enabling a degree of engagement with choices and representations that would not otherwise be possible: I’ve been thinking…

  • Fuck virality, I want my ideas to be radioactive

    There’s a fascinating footnote in Radio Benjamin, loc 395-410, discussing Adorno’s description of Benjamin’s ideas as ‘radioactive’: The full sentence reads, “Everything which fell under the scrutiny of his words was transformed, as though it had become radioactive,” … Although Adorno’s metaphor uses a different register of boundary crossing, the German radioaktiv, like the English…

  • Social Media Training Workshop

    Social Media Training Workshop Led by Holly Powell Jones City University, London EC1V 0HB   Monday 8 May 2017, 12.30 – 4.00 pm This workshop will be of interest and assistance if you wish to use social media to disseminate your work, identify and share relevant opportunities, communicate a cause, or promote an organisation, charity,…

  • My new chapter on the digitalisation of the archive

    Some cyber-optimists see the digitalisation of the archive as offering an endless abundance of cultural goods available to all. However this chapter takes a more gloomy view, arguing that the digitalised archive can in fact contribute in many ways to the disorientation and distraction of contemporary persons, rendering the process of ‘shaping a life’ more…

  • What does it mean to be a public sociologist in an age of Donald Trump?

    My keynote from Public sociology and the role of the researcher: engagement, communication and academic activism postgraduate conference a couple of weeks ago:

  • Do academics write badly because they’re rushing?

    I saw the science journalist Simon Makin give an excellent talk yesterday on how social and natural scientists can make their writing clearer. He offered some excellent tips to this end, including assuming your reader is exactly as intelligent as you are, but has absolutely none of your knowledge. For this reason, clarity isn’t about being simplistic: aim to clarify without…

  • Creative Methods for Research and Community Engagement Summer School

    Creative Methods for Research and Community Engagement Summer School 6-8 July 2017, Keele University PhD students and Early Career Researchers are welcome at this event organised by the Community Animation and Social Innovation Centre (CASIC) at Keele University. The Summer School will be held in central England at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme (6-7 July)…

  • Miniconference on post-truth and digital media in Reading UK coming up

    Call for Proposals BAAL Language and New Media Sig Annual Meeting MINI-CONFERENCE Language, New Media and Alt.Realities April 21, 2017 University of Reading Proposals are invited for 20 minute paper presentations as well as posters/web-based presentations addressing the theme of ‘language, new media and alt.realties’. Possible areas of interest include: ·       New media…

  • Social Imaginaries: The re-invention of social research

    Social Imaginaries: The re-invention of social research Panel discussion and book launch of Digital Sociology by Noortje Marres   Date and Time: 9 May, 5-7pm Location: Central Saint Martins, Granary Building, Granary Square, London N1C 4AA Hosted by: – Innovation Insights Hub, University of the Arts London – Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick – Warwick…

  • Why it’s fine to ‘broadcast’ on Twitter

    Foremost amongst the guidance offered about Twitter is the claim that it is fundamentally a conversational platform. One shouldn’t simply ‘broadcast’. It’s for discussion and engagement. There’s an element of truth in this but it’s one which can be lost through repetition, as the status of received wisdom stops us from thinking critically about why everyone agreed with…

  • The Sociological Review Annual Public Lecture 2017: Cities and the Political Imagination

    The Sociological Review Annual Lecture 2017 Friday 28th April, 2017 Time: 5:45pm – 8:00pm, followed by wine reception Location: Manchester Museum, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL Cities and the Political Imagination Keynote Speaker: Professor Rivke Jaffe Responses by Professor Claire Alexander Dr. Emma Jackson How can we recognize the political in the city? How might…

  • The Ontology of Fake News

    What we are seeing with the growth of ‘fake news’ is perhaps the weaponisation of epistemology. In other words, ‘fake news’ as a construct is becoming a discursive component of our repertoire of contention. Far from entering a post-truth era, we are seeing truth becoming a mobilising device in a new way, encouraging ‘us’ to defend…

  • Youth employment in the ‘gig’ economy, isolation and @youthloneliness

    Isolation at the beginning of working lives  As part of the @YouthLoneliness project (Twitter/Tumblr), we are interested to find out more about young people’s working lives, their casual employment, their experience of self-employment and their involvement in the ‘gig economy.’ The Co-op Movement (like the Trade Union movement) was a movement that brought people facing…

  • things I’ve been reading recently #33

    Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell Insane Clown President by Matt Taibbi The Academic Caesar by Steve Fuller Griftopia by Matt Taibbi

  • CfP: Queer Studies Conference

    Looking Back, Looking Forward Friday 30th June 2017, University of Surrey, Guildford BSA Early Career Forum Regional Event Contemporary queer studies increasingly focus on broad areas of sociological concern. It is therefore common to find early career researchers working on issues relating to sexuality across the humanities and social sciences. This interdisciplinarity leads to exciting…

  • The Porous University – A critical exploration of openness, space and place in Higher Education

    Call for participation Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th May 2017 University of the Highlands and Islands, Inverness Campus This two-day symposium arose out of a series of conversations and reflections on the nature of openness within Higher Education. It started with the observation that openness is increasingly seen as a technical question, whose solution lies…

  • The Impact of Social Theory

    The Sociological Review has just published a thought-provoking review of Doug Porpora’s Reconstructing Sociology: The Critical Realist Approach. It gives a lucid, though brief, overview of the book’s core arguments: seven myths which afflict American sociology and seven philosophical counter-points. But what caught my attention was the account of how theoretical work can increase the discipline’s…

  • Defensive Elites

    This New Yorker feature on Robert Mercer is a fascinating insight into what I’m come to think of as defensive elites: self-congratulatory yet paranoid billionaires who are prepared to use their wealth to stave off what they see as unwarranted social attack. The analysis offered by David Magerman, formerly a senior manager at Mercer’s hedge fund, seems particularly…

  • The Uberfication of the University: the Digital Studienbuch and the 21st Century Privatdozent

    In my copy of The Vocation Lectures, edited by David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, the editors helpfully annotate Weber’s description of the occupational realities of the German academic. From pg 2: German students used to have a Studienbuch, a notebook in which they registered the coruses they were taking in their field. They then had…

  • Keeping the conversation going in an age of scholarly abundance

    In the last few years, I’ve become increasingly preoccupied with the notion of ‘the literature’ and how it is invoked by scholars. I’m now rather sceptical of the way in which many people talk about ‘the literature’ and the role it plays in scholarship. It’s not that I don’t think it’s important to identify, engage with and…

  • Marketing the Digital University

    In the excellent Lower Ed, Tressie McMillan Cottom reflects on the market-orientation of for-profit colleges, tending to seek a continual growth in student numbers. This growth imperative can manifest itself in marketing and recruitment outstripping teaching in institutional spending. From pg 20: If budgets are moral documents, the fact that some financialized for-profit colleges reportedly spent…

  • The Cesspool of YouTube

    Via Philip Moriarty:

  • On Irritation, Or, How Social Networks Tend To Make Us Slightly More Assholic

    In the last couple of months, I’ve found myself reflecting on irritation. What is it? It’s one of our most recognisable reactions to the world, yet it’s hard to be precise about what it is. Is it an emotion? Is it a state of mind? Is it a reaction to the world? This is the definition which Wikipedia…

  • What is compound distraction?

    I’m not a fan of The End of Absence by Michael Harris but I love this term. From pg 216: The experience of one person’s distraction compounding another’s. Julie kept texting while I was talking about my cat, so I started texting, too. Existing in two varietals: “limited compound distraction” refers to a moment of positive…

  • The Social Challenge of Platform Proliferation

  • Cities and the Political Imagination

    The Sociological Review Annual Lecture 2017 How can we recognize the political in the city? How might social scientists engage with forms of politics outside of established sites of research such as those associated with representative democracy or collective mobilizations? This presentation suggests that new perspectives on urban politics might be enabled by revisiting the…

  • things I’ve been reading recently #32

    The End of Absence by Michael Harris The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin One Market Under God by Thomas Frank Uberworked and Underpaid by Trebor Scholz The Curse of the Monsters of Educational Technology by Audrey Watters The Revenge of the Monsters of Educational Technology by Audrey Watters The Upstarts by Brad…

  • The Technology of Intellectual Work

    In 1988 Pierre Bourdieu chaired a commission reviewing the curriculum at the behest of the minister of national education. The scope of the review was broad, encompassing a revision of subjects taught in order to strengthen the coherence and unity of the curriculum as a whole. In order to inform this work, the commission early…

  • Collateral consequences 

    It’s a commonplace to recognise that the power of corporate actors is often invoked as a justification for their lenient treatment. After all, if the government takes action against them then everyone will suffer. But I didn’t realise this had been formally expressed, in the notion of collateral consequences put forward by Eric Holder, during…

  • The Ontology of Fateful Moments

    In his On the Ontological Mystery, Gabriel Marcel describes the experience of “an irresistible appeal which overturns the habitual perspectives just as a gust of wind might tumble down the panels of a stage set”. He is talking of a chance meeting with a stranger, but the image is a powerful one which characterises many…

  • Bloggers and their role in the dissemination of scholarly information

    Notes from this Webinar. I had to leave after the second speaker so they’re not complete. Alt metrics are a complement to existing metrics, addressing some of the key issues posed by metrics: the lag time of citations, the limitations of impact factor, the time to publication and their focus on a niche audience. The intention of…

  • Margaret Archer and Bernard Lahire as post-Bourdieusian social theorists

    In an interesting chapter Frederic Vandenberghe explores the role of the individual in Bourdieu’s Sociology, as well as the critiques which Margaret Archer and Bernard Lahire make of it. His intention is to respond to a sociology he sees as hegemonic by developing a post-Bourdieusian theory of the social world that is not anti-Bourdieusian. His project, as…

  • Some really interesting theory reading lists

    Looking at Omar Lizardo’s website, I found links to the reading lists for the courses he is teaching. I’d really like to work through these in future, particularly the one of Cognitive Sociology. http://www3.nd.edu/~olizardo/courses.html

  • Perfecting the work/life blend

    HT Justin Cruickshank Perfecting the work/life blend from Samsung at Work

  • Dealing with online harassment: guidance for academics

    These are some useful links I’ve stumbled across or had suggested to me. Any suggestions of other reading on this topic would be very welcome: Scholars under attack On dealing with online criticism and trolls for academics Best Practices for Conducting Risky Research and Protecting Yourself from Online Harassment

  • If uber are acting like this now, how would they act if they had a monopoly?

    The New York Times reveals the lengths Uber will go to in order to evade regulatory scrutiny and intervention: Uber’s use of Greyball was recorded on video in late 2014, when Erich England, a code enforcement inspector in Portland, Ore., tried to hail an Uber car downtown in a sting operation against the company. At…

  • The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine

    Earlier today I saw a fascinating demonstration at Manchester Science Museum of a replica Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (nicked named ‘Baby’). This was the first computer with electronic memory: The facilitator of the demonstration gave a wonderfully clear explanation of how the physical mechanisms of the machine operated. I’d understood the principle of how memory worked (encoding sequences of information…

  • Pierre Bourdieu, liberal thought and the ontology of collectives

    Well over a decade ago, I was due to start a PhD in Political Philosophy looking at ideas of the individual within liberal thought. There are many reasons why I ultimately moved into a Sociology department instead, though my lack of regrets about this choice hasn’t stopped me occasionally wondering what might this thesis might…

  • Pierre Bourdieu, post-war Algeria and the existential conditions for collective action

    In an early essay on post-war Algeria, Pierre Bourdieu reflected on the existential experience of the urban sub-proletariat and its political significance. This is reproduced on pg 16 of Political Interventions: Social Science and Political Action: Habituation to prolonged unemployment and the most casual and poorly paid work, along with the lack of any regular employment,…

  • The new frontiers of monitoring your students

    I doubt I was the only person who was surprised to encounter this initiative from University of Buckingham. Driven by their vice-chancellor Anthony Seldon, an educationalist who grew up surrounded by the neoliberal revolution, it invites students to opt-in to the monitoring of their social media profiles in order to track the efficacy of the university’s positive…

  • Digital labour and the epistemic fallacy 

    One of the arguments which pervades Uberworked and Underpaid, by Trebor Scholz, concerns the materiality of digital labour. As someone whose back and neck start to ache if I spend too much time at a computer, I’ve always found the tendency to assume there is something mysteriously immaterial about using computers to be rather absurd.…

  • The cultural significance of blogging

    In his Uberworked and Underpaid, Trebor Scholz offers an important reflection on the cultural significance of blogging. While its uptake has been exaggerated, dependent upon questionable assumptions concerning the relationship between users and blogs, it nonetheless represents a transformation of and expansion of cultural agency which needs to be taken seriously. From loc 3825: Web…

  • To understand social media for academics, we have to kill the idea of social media for academics 

    In the 30+ talks I have done about social media in the last year, I have discussed many things. But the one theme that has been most prominent is the extrinsic, rather than intrinsic, complexity of the subject matter. There is nothing inherently challenging about how to use social media. Any practical or technical difficulties…

  • Speculative thoughts about the phenomenology of digitalisation

    A few weeks ago, I found myself on a late night train to Manchester from London. After a long day, I was longing to arrive home, a prospect that seemed imminent as the train approached Stockport. Then it stopped. Eventually, we were told that there was someone on the tracks ahead and that the police…

  • CFP: Alternative Facts: Constructing Truth in Civil Societies

    As the workings of civil society are being disrupted by the challenges of ‘alternative facts’, ‘fake news’ and notions of post-truth, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal has decided to devote a special issue to this topic. Our approach is broad; the flow of information is fundamental to civil society and that flow and its interactions with…

  • The ambivalent promise of higher education

    In the latest collection of talks from Audrey Watters, The Curse of the Monsters of Educational Technology, she addresses an uncomfortable issue in higher education: the unrealistic claims made about the transformative aspect of university attendance. From loc 397-413: These questions get at what is an uncomfortable and largely unspoken truth about education. That is,…

  • A conversation between myself and @benjamingeer about a Bourdieusian approach to understanding alt-academia

    I thought others might find this interesting. I’d certainly be interested in hearing people’s perspectives on what we were discussing. I’m in bold, Benjamin is in italics.  Does the situation of skholè still obtain in the accelerated academy? This is a great question. Maybe an answer could go something like this, focusing on the distinction…

  • Donald Trump: Everyday Tactics of Post-Truth

    In The Making of Donald Trump, David Johnston identifies the tactics used by Trump to deflect inquiries into his many shady dealings and questionable decisions. Sometimes this is a matter of outright threats, with an enthusiasm for litigation (1,900 suits as plaintiffs)  coupled with an explicitly articulated philosophy of vengeance proving a dangerous combination for any who…

  • A Domain of One’s Own

  • The Future of ‘Impact’ in the UK

    I’m reading through the Stern review in preparation for various impact related things I’m doing in the next few weeks. It takes the view that the 6,975 impact case studies produced and £55 million estimated to have been spent on the impact element of the last REF has clearly contributed to “an evolving culture of wider engagement,…

  • The Sociological Review Early Career Researcher Event: Senior Seminar with Rivke Jaffe

    The Sociological Review Early Career Researcher Event: Senior Seminar with Rivke Jaffe The Manchester Museum Friday 28th April 2017 10.00-17.00 The Sociological Review Foundation invite applicants to take part in a workshop with Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam) taking place in advance of our Annual Lecture. If your research involves thinking and dealing with ethical,…

  • The Silicon Valley Narrative

    Another extract from Audrey Watters, this time from The Curse of the Monsters of Educational Technology, who analysis of the rhetoric of disruption has fast become one of my favourite examples of digital cultural critique. From loc 184: “The Silicon Valley Narrative,” as I call it, is the story that the technology industry tells about…

  • Call for AoIR Tartu panel participants on Algorithmic Agency

    This looks like a very interesting panel: We are looking for a few additional people who might be interested in contributing to an AoIR panel exploring critical questions and issues surrounding algorithmic agency, power and publics. Researchers and media commentators alike are seemingly fascinated with the magic-like and opaque properties of algorithms. Algorithms are touted…

  • Abundance and austerity 

    From The Revenge of the Monsters of Educational Technology, by Audrey Watters, loc 1187: Many of us in education technology talk about this being a moment of great abundance—information abundance—thanks to digital technologies. But I think we are actually/ also at a moment of great austerity. And when we talk about the future of education,…

  • The myths of academic life

    This great post by Martin Weller takes issue with the recent click bait published by the Guardian Higher Education’s anonymous academics series. He argues that they perpetuate an outdated stereotype of academic labour which has no relationship to the reality: There are undoubtedly more, but when you piece these three together, what you get is…