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  • What’s it like to be a corporate executive receiving an order to cooperate with an authoritarian government?

    An interesting, albeit brief, answer to this question in Losing the Signal, pg 210-211: A senior official from Egypt’s telecommunications regulator had just called to deliver an ultimatum, she said. State-owned Telecom Egypt had yanked the plug on BlackBerry service in the country, and it would stay off-line until RIM handed over encryption keys for…

  • Interested in the internal conversation? Come to this symposium @SocioWarwick on May 24th

    Following on from a succesful event this time last year, we’re organising another reflexivity forum. We potentially have one more speaking slot available but we’re still keen for others to come along for the discussion. Here’s the programme for the day: E-mail me: mark@markcarrigan.net if you’d let to register – please do so ASAP though as I’ll…

  • 28,100 journals publishing 2.5 million articles a year

    Thanks to @irenehames for pointing out there’s a new version of this annual report I’ve drawn from in the past. There were about 28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed English-language journals in late 2014 (plus a further 6450 non-English-language journals), collectively publishing about 2.5 million articles a year. http://www.stm-assoc.org/2015_02_20_STM_Report_2015.pdf

  • Before WhatsApp there was BBM

    From Losing the Signal, pg 203: The most compelling feature driving BlackBerry sales in the developing world wasn’t wireless e-mail but another application that had been included with devices since the mid-2000s: BlackBerry Messenger. While BlackBerry was losing the app race in North America, BBM was establishing itself as BlackBerry’s first “killer app” since wireless…

  • The King of Kong: a documentary about celebrity gamers

    And another documentary, via @Carwyn:

  • My highlights from #RPten (and the most interesting stuff I missed)

    There’s quite a bit of stuff I did see (e.g. my good friend @NotRightRuth‘s excellent talk) and one specific session I wish I had seen (on BitCoin) which hasn’t been uploaded yet. Stuff I missed and want to watch: 

  • How life coaching spreads in corporate cultures

    From Losing the Signal, Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s history of Research In Motion, pg 179: Bruised by the Storm experience and confused by the apparent rift between Balsillie and Lazaridis, executives feuded more frequently over turf and for the attention of their CEOs. Some turned to Don Morrison, the company’s kindly Father Time, who…

  • Predictive analytics and the intensification of work

    Yesterday I blogged about the impossible demands placed upon staff as a management strategy. What happens if you fail to meet these demands? This is an important question but it’s one which becomes even more crucial if, as seems likely, predictive analytics hits human resources departments: Candidate Pre-screening – One of HR’s Best “Predictive Analytics…

  • The Accelerative Ethos of Steve Jobs

    From the Commencement address Steve Jobs gave on June 12, 2005: When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have…

  • A cautionary tale for independent researchers

    A terrifically honest post from Frances Coppola about the difficulties she has faced as an independent researcher. As I embark in a roughly similar direction, I’m worried this is what the future has in store for me, particularly when working within an organisational culture that is disturbingly ill-attuned to the idea of paying people for their…

  • The size of social networks and the size of nation states

    A really interesting way of looking at this:

  • What happens in an internet minute?

    HT @simonlindgren

  • Call for Applications: The Inaugural CUHK Research Summit: Digital Methods & Social Development

    This looks really interesting: Call for Applications: The Inaugural CUHK Research Summit: Digital Methods & Social Development Time: 21 – 27 August 2016 Place: C-Centre (Centre for Chinese Media & Comparative Communication Research), School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong Map of Location: http://ow.ly/4nj3Wu <http://ow.ly/4nj3Wu> Event flyer:…

  • What would techno-fascist punishment look like?

    Perhaps something rather like this. From a disturbing but important article: The scary thing about VR as a torture device is its versatility. “It’s difficult to conceive of the upper limits of distress. The human mind’s capacity for suffering is tremendously vast,” the people at BeAnotherLab told me, “as is human ingenuity to cause suffering…

  • Call for Papers: Communities of Practice: Toward a Local and Global Digital Humanities

    CALL FOR PAPERS Communities of Practice: Toward a Local and Global Digital Humanities This special collection will explore the potential impact of information technology and digital media on humanities research communities. The editors encourage a wide range of novel and interdisciplinary approaches to this theme. We seek submissions dedicated to describing community formation and collaboration…

  • The Second Accelerated Academy

    Good news! This week it was learnt that CWTS will play host to the second annual conference ‘The Accelerated Academy: Evaluation, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life’. Generously sponsored by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, the event will take place from 30th November to 2nd December 2016 in the beautiful city-centre of…

  • Music to catch up on work to #1

  • Imposing impossible demands as a management strategy

    There’s a great story in Losing the Signal, Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s history of Research In Motion, relating how the management responded to the threat of the iPhone: promise an ever more amazing phone to wireless carriers and then simply demand that the engineering team produce it on a minimal timescale. From pg 142: RIM…

  • When phones became computers

    A really important bit of history recounted in Losing the Signal, pg 139-140, a really excellent book about the history of Research In Motion: In the summer of 2007, however, Lazaridis cracked open a phone that gave him pause. “They’ve put a Mac in this thing,” he marveled after peering inside one of the new…

  • Using social media to map scholarly literatures

    At a time when there are more than 28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals publishing around 1.8-1.9 million articles per year, finding ways to navigate scholarly literatures are more important than ever. This is one of the most exciting ways in which social media can be used to directly enhance scholarly practice. There are many forms this can…

  • The Sociology of Patent Trolling

    In their interesting history of the rise and fall of Research In Motion, Losing the Signal, Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff describe how close a patent troll came to taking down what was at the time becoming the dominant player in the nascent market for smart phones. A patent was salvaged from a failed company and…

  • It’s not you, it’s capitalism

    This essay on Medium has reminded me of my idea to write a short satirical self-help book, addressing individual problems as social and economic issues:   If I am struggling financially it is because the financial system is morally corrupt. This truth is a mantric elixir — repeat it to yourself every time the habits of your mind…

  • The London Radical Book Fair at Goldsmiths, this Saturday 7th May

    Radical booksellers, publishers, artists and activists of all stripes are setting up in the Great Hall at Goldsmiths University to host the 4th London Radical Bookfair.  With over 130 exhibitors and 20 guest speakers, this will be a unique gathering of progressive readers, thinkers and doers, in a celebration of radical publishing and politics.  The…

  • Symposium: Reorientating Sociological Thought

    Re-orienting Sociological Thought?                                Glamorgan Council Chamber, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences Cardiff University 2pm to 4pm, Wednesday, May 11th 2016 In recent years, we’ve seen the proliferation of calls to reorientate sociological thought around new concerns, methodologies and approaches that can ground the discipline in changing times. This symposium brings together advocates of…

  • Workshop: Using the Morphogenetic Approach

    June 21st, 10am to 5pm The University of Warwick This one day workshop is intended for those currently using or planning to use the morphogenetic approach in their research. In the first half of the workshop, Margaret Archer will give an overview of the morphogenetic approach and its development, as well as address conceptual and…

  • Lucy Powell on Conservative anti-Semitism in the last election

    Something to remember as the Tory-led condemnation of Labour’s alleged anti-Semitism reaches fever pitch: Shadow education minister Lucy Powell ran day-to-day operations for Labour’s 2015 general election campaign. That year’s dog-whistle consisted of telling the electorate, again and again, that Labour had never apologised for destroying the economy, and that Ed Miliband stabbed his brother…

  • The Sociological Review Annual Sociology Lecture

    The Sociological Review Annual Sociology Lecture  Friday May 20th 2016, 17.45-21.00 SOAS, University of London This event is free but it is essential to register. To reserve a place, please email Jenny Thatcher [events@thesociologicalreview.com]. Keynote: Professor Éric Fassin (Université Paris-8)  Discussants: Professor Gurminder K Bhambra (University of Warwick, UK and Linnaeus University, Sweden) and Dr…

  • The Social Life of Theory: Partiality, Conflict and Innovation

    Clearing out my stock of library books, some of which I’ve had for a number of years, I’ve inevitably been drawn into looking through books I was once excited about before subsequently forgetting. Jeff Alexander’s Twenty Lecture in Social Theory is foremost among these, as a book I’d skim read but on second reading is…

  • Symposium: Reorientating Sociological Thought

    Re-orienting Sociological Thought?                                Glamorgan Council Chamber, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences Cardiff University 2pm to 4pm, Wednesday, May 11th 2016 In recent years, we’ve seen the proliferation of calls to reorientate sociological thought around new concerns, methodologies and approaches that can ground the discipline in changing times. This symposium brings together advocates of…

  • Breathe for me: interesting performance event in collaboration with @sociowarwick

    Breathe For Meby Martin O’Brien Thu 5 May 2016 – 7.45pm Martin O’Brien’s practice focuses on physical endurance and disgust in relation to the fact he suffers from cystic fibrosis. Breathe for Me considers the nature of the regulated chronically ill body. Martin O’Brien re-embodies and takes pleasure in the excessive performance of an already…

  • Obama’s Best Comebacks and Rebuttals

    And on a similar(ish) note:

  • The Entlastung of the Quantified Self

    I’m very interested in this concept, which I was introduced to through the work of Pierpaolo Donati and Andrea Maccarini earlier this year. It emerged from the work of Arnold Gehlen and refers to the role of human institutions in unburdening us from existential demands. This is quoted from his Human Beings and Institutions on pg 257…

  • A Lockean case for the ownership of personal data 

    An interesting idea from Craig Lambert’s Shadow Work loc 3116 which deserves to be explored in greater depth: As noted earlier, philosopher John Locke argued that labor creates property; taking his view, if your shadow work made some information, it is your possession. In fact, who owns your data—your informational body—may some day be as…

  • The multiplication of communication channels

    This is a really nice description from Craig Lambert’s Shadow Work of a problem I describe in a forthcoming paper as the multiplication of communication channels. From loc 3038-3054: The mushrooming number of communication channels spins off another type of shadow work. At one time, to reach a friend, you could send a letter or…

  • Crowd sourcing technical support: why do user helps corporations?

    From Shadow Work, by Craig Lambert, loc 2301. Does anyone know of ethnographies exploring the motivations of those who do this work and the meanings they attach to it?  Apple online “communities” at discussions.apple.com, for example, include forums for users of most kinds of Apple software, like iTunes and Apple Pay, as well as Apple…

  • A podcast about Social Media for Academics

    Thanks to Dave O’Brien for recording this podcast with me about my book for New Books In Sociology. 

  • the challenge of cultural abundance

    This passage from Shadow Work, by Craig Lambert, conveys what I’ve written about in two recent papers as the challenge of cultural abundance. From loc 1395: To be sure, posting creations does not guarantee them an audience. Far from it. Take the songs that anyone can now publish online and sell as downloads. In 2011,…

  • The Temporal Cost of the Commute

    From Shadow Work, by Craig Lambert, loc 198: Commuting—the job of getting to the job—is an unpaid task done to serve the employer. It has become so woven into American life that we scarcely recognize it for what it is. Yet commuting is very expensive, time-consuming shadow work. The commuter must either brave crowded public…

  • 40 reasons why you should blog about your research

    It helps you become more clear about your ideas. It gives you practice at presenting your ideas for a non-specialist audience. It increases your visibility within academia. It increases your visibility outside academia and makes it much easier for journalists, campaigners and practitioners to find you. It increases your visibility more than a static site and allows…

  • Has there ever been a Presidential hopeful who has appeared in so many tacky TV adverts?

  • The creepiness of ‘networking’ discourse and the WikiHow-ification of academic career advice

    I’m tempted to start keeping a file of advice like this. Am I missing something obvious, or is it not incredibly creepy to identify people in advance, research their life history, write a script for an encounter and then practice it? Research and assess Research the guest professionals, their job descriptions and their current and past affiliations before…

  • The Liberal Imagination of Barack Obama

    What messages can we take from this speech? It’s Obama at his most self-consciously inspirational, addressing ‘young people’ pursuing social change. I think it can also be taken as an attempt to outline a worldview in the broadest terms. Here’s some suggestion about the content of what I’ve come to think of as the ‘liberal…

  • What does Economic Sociology have to say about declining productivity?

    What does Economic Sociology have to say about declining productivity? This is a question I find myself wondering about ever more frequently and I’d really appreciate any recommendations about where to start reading. The knee-jerk vulgar Marxism I slip into when I’ve not thought through an issue has led me to assume that the issue…

  • Understanding the Features of Different Social Media Platforms

    A really useful graphic tweeted by The Sociological Cinema:

  • Creating an ‘idea index’

    In an interview from 2014 Maria Popova, curator of the wonderful Brain Pickings blog, explained how she reads books. Cal Newport summarises on his blog: Around thirty-one minutes into the interview, Popova explains how she takes notes on books: As she reads, she creates an index at the front of the book that lists its…

  • Convenience rather than urgency as a driver of constant connectivity

    An interesting insight from Losing the Signal, a nicely written book about the rise and fall of Research In Motion. On pg 59, the authors describe how the company found little interest in constant connectivity on grounds of urgency, because phone calls would suffice for anything truly urgent. On the other hand, the prospect of…

  • Capitalism will eat democracy – unless we speak up

  • #YesWeCode Initiative

    This is really interesting on a number of levels. I don’t want to cast doubt on the value of the project or the motivations underlying it, but I think there are important questions to be asked about the increasing weight placed on the diffusion of coding skills as a way to ameliorate inequality: >#YesWeCode (http://www.yeswecode.org)…

  • neo-progressive cat contemplates own existence

    https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/723794999201157120 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/723795667911581696 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/723805417697083392 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/723806394886008832 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/723807289333944320 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/723808996122091520 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/723809707652190209 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/723810668588240897 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/723929003489419264

  • The foundational lie of digital capitalism

    From Alan Jacobs (Via Audrey Watters): The megatech companies’ ability to convince us that they are not Big Business but rather just open-minded, open-hearted, exploratory technological creators is perhaps the most powerful and influential — and radically misleading — sales jobs of the past 25 years. The Californian ideology has become our ideology. Which means…

  • The Bechdel test for tech conferences

    The Bechdel test for tech conferences: 1) two women speaking 2) on the same panel 3) not about women in tech. — Monica Rogati (@mrogati) November 15, 2015

  • ‘Economic Science Fictions’ – call for essays

    This looks fantastic. Considering whether to submit a proposal: The newly established Goldsmiths Press will be publishing a collection of essays on the topic of ‘economic science fictions’. The volume will be edited by Will Davies, Co-Director of PERC, and encompass various disciplinary perspectives, writing styles, including fiction and non-fiction. This builds on PERC’s launch…

  • things I’ve been reading recently #21

    This Town by Mark Leibovich Wasted Lives by Zygmunt Bauman The Refusal of Work by David Frayne The Deep State by Mike Lofgren American Politics in an Age of Ignorance by David Schultz Broken Promise by Lindwood Barclay Graphic Novels Outcast: A Darkness Surrounds Him by Robert Kirkman Outcast: A Vast and Unending Ruin by…

  • “Please, sir, may I go home?”

    An interesting snippet from Losing The Signal, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, concerning the lengths to which overzealous mangers would go during the early days of Research In Motion. From pg 39: One RIM manager became so obsessed with deadlines he issued an edict requiring engineers to ask permission before leaving at night. Lazaridis…

  • Rant-driven journalism 

    An interesting insight from This Town, by Mark Leibovich, pg 278-279. It would presumably be near impossible for a website like Politico to maintain its level of output without resorting to processes like this: Sure enough, a few days later, Politico’s founding editor, John Harris, went on a new enterprise called “Politico TV” and revealed…

  • The emergence of the ‘informal advisor’ in Washington politics 

    From This Town, by Mark Leibovich, pg 284. This is another example of a key theme of the book, albeit one explored in an exclusively gossipy way: the money to be made through working at the boundaries between institutional  spheres, occasionally crossing them strategically and playing off this connection. It’s a nice arrangement, though, the…

  • Post-democracy’s no-nonsense purveyors of hard political truths

    I thought this was an interesting suggestion, from This Town by Mark Leibovich, concerning the tendency of a mendacious and stage-managed political culture to give rise to ‘straight talkers’. From pg 324-325: The unquestioned Big Man on Campus in Tampa, at least for the first part of GOP-looza, was Chris Christie, the rotund Republican governor…

  • Children’s and Young People’s Rights in the Digital Age

    A topic I want to learn more about:  Registration is now open for our conference in July on children’s and young people’s rights in the digital age at LSE, a central London-based IAMCR pre-conference. Please register here: http://eshop.lse.ac.uk/browse/product.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=327 (Early bird fees run until 20 May). See http://iamcr.org/leicester2016/preconf/youth-digital-rights for the outline programme. The draft full programme…

  • Sustaining your focus throughout the working day

    An extract from Social Media for Academics In recent years we’ve seen the notion of ‘internet addiction’ enter the popular consciousness. As a self-description it’s sometimes invoked facetiously, some­times desperately and occasionally in a way which combines the two. It would be silly for me to try and take a stance on such a complex…

  • Pace Science: Data, Acceleration, Duration (cc @filvos)

    I was just sent a link to this fascinating workshop. Shared for those interested in the accelerated academy: Workshop: Pace Science: Data, Acceleration, Duration. University of Exeter – Byrne House. 16th-17th of May 2016. Co-Convened by Spaces of Evidence and Beyond the Digital Divide Research Team including: Lou Bezuidenhout, Ann H. Kelly, Sabina Leonelli, Linsey…

  • A symposium on the digital subject

    Another fascinating event in London I can’t get to: *Digital Subjects* *12 May 2016, Senate House, London* *Organiser:* Olga Goriunova, Royal Holloway University of London Digital subjects can be many things: a nested set of abstractions assembled by algorithms; a dynamic data aggregate feeding upon the movement of bodies in space and time; an experiential,…

  • Help support @DiscoverSoc

    Dear Colleague, I hope that you have come across Discover Society the online magazine which publishes pieces based on social science research for a wide audience – you may even have written for us – but if not do check it out at discoversociety.org As Editors we are committed ensuring that the magazine continues to…

  • The value of university managed online spaces

    A superb article by Sierra Williams, editor of the LSE Impact Blog, building on a talk she did at an event in Sheffield last week:

  • How to use social media for academic purposes

    A really useful overview from Sage of some of the online material on my site: Read a free chapter from Mark’s book on using social media to publicise your work Watch a series of videocasts from Mark, including one on whether academics should blog Listen to a collection of podcasts from Mark, including one discussing…

  • Defensive Elites: understanding the 0.1%

    A really interesting overview of the changing composition of the 1%, including the over-stated but nonetheless interesting claim that we are seeing the beginning of a new age in which the 0.1% are coming out from “their behind-the-scenes positions and stepping right onto the political stage”: All told, the 0.1 percent now owns about as much wealth…

  • The Dual-Edged Character of Digital Freedom

    From Mediated Memories, by Jose van Dijck, pg 119. The immediate discussion is about digital photography but the point can be extended much more widely: In many ways, digital tools and connective systems expand control over an individual’s image exposure, granting more power to present and shape oneself in public. However, the flipside of this…

  • The normalisation of the revolving door in U.S. Politics

    From This Town, by Mark Leibovich, pg 163: Calculations vary on how many former members of Congress have joined the influence-peddling set. By the middle of 2011, at least 160 former lawmakers were working as lobbyists in Washington, according to First Street, a website that tracks lobbying trends in D.C., in April 2013. The Center…

  • The entrepreneurial journalist

    From This Town, by Mark Leibovich, pg 116. They’re talking about the journalist who runs the Playbook gossip column but I think the discussion of him as an exemplar of a new journalistic type is very interesting: If such qualities can coexist, Mikey can be perceived as both a decent and solid friend, and also…

  • The Self-Understandings of Technocratic Elites

    From This Town, by Mark Leibovich, pg 137: Clever locals refer to the Correspondents’ Association dinner as “Nerd Prom.” This is one of those self-congratulatory Beltway terms masked as self-deprecation. “Nerd” implies that everyone would of course much rather be immersed in the deep wiring of some issue, something of weight and substance—they are “nerds,”…

  • Death Online Research: Last minute CFA 

    Call For Abstracts DORS3:3rd International Death Online Research Symposium Abstract deadline: April 20 Time and place: October 11.-13. 2016 (symposium) October 14. (PhD course) at Aarhus University, Denmark Schedule Symposium: Tuesday, Oct. 11. Starting with lunch around 12 – Thursday Oct. 13. ending around 15. for everyone to get their flights. PhD course: Friday, October…

  • Steve Fuller on information overload

    An interesting talk by Steve Fuller on information overload. He starts with the academic context in which much of what’s published is not read, much of what’s read is not cited and yet academics are pressured to continually publish more. For whom is this a pathological condition? He argues that the implicit standpoint here is that of a decision…

  • Are you coming to @thesocreview’s Annual Lecture?

    The Sociological Review Annual Sociology Lecture  Friday May 20th 2016, 17.45-21.00 SOAS, University of London This event is free but it is essential to register. To reserve a place, please email Jenny Thatcher [events@thesociologicalreview.com]. Keynote: Professor Éric Fassin (Université Paris-8)  Discussants: Professor Gurminder K Bhambra (University of Warwick, UK and Linnaeus University, Sweden) and Dr…

  • Workshop: Using the Morphogenetic Approach

    June 21st, 10am to 5pm The University of Warwick This one day workshop is intended for those currently using or planning to use the morphogenetic approach in their research. In the first half of the workshop, Margaret Archer will give an overview of the morphogenetic approach and its development, as well as address conceptual and…

  • Are you studying the internal conversation? Get in touch soon for a free workshop

    We still have one place left for this workshop. Get in touch very soon if you’d like to take part: Reflexivity Forum 10am-5pm, May 24th 2016 R1.04, University of Warwick Following from a successful initial meeting last year, this event will be the first of a hopefully ongoing series of events aimed at those investigating…

  • Do we need to reorientate Sociological thought? Or are perpetual calls to do this part of the problem?

    Re-orienting Sociological Thought?                                Glamorgan Council Chamber, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences Cardiff University 2pm to 4pm, Wednesday, May 11th 2016 In recent years, we’ve seen the proliferation of calls to reorientate sociological thought around new concerns, methodologies and approaches that can ground the discipline in changing times. This symposium brings together advocates of…

  • How will social media transform #highered?

    I asked this question on Twitter, offering a free copy of Social Media for Academics to the person who wrote the most interesting answer in two tweets or less. Here were the responses: @mark_carrigan @Soc_Imagination Homogenize, sanitize, try to monetize & brand evthing in sight, driving free expression further underground. — 🌴tp🌒🦉 (@3DogCouch) April 16,…

  • The Politics of Time and the Possibility of Democracy

    From David Frayne’s Refusal of Work pg 222. My first paper on this topic is coming out soon. Indeed, perhaps one of the reasons why democratic debate is currently in such a moribund state is that our busy lives leave us with so little time to study policies, collectively organise, or find out what is…

  • The Pains of Work and the Relief of the Refrain

    Another concept I was unfamiliar with introduced in David Frayne’s superb Refusal of Work. From pg 210: For most of us, and for good reason, giving up work seems like an extreme solution, and working less is not always a practical option. When the periodic sense of dissatisfaction swells within, most of us resort to a…

  • “What do you do?”

    From The Refusal of Work, by David Frayne, pg 199: What do you do? After ‘What is your name?’ and possibly ‘Where are you from?’ this is one of the first questions that strangers usually pose to one another, with convention dictating that this question is almost always an enquiry into our employment situation. ‘What…

  • The Temporal Constraints of Consumption

    Really intriguing argument by David Frayne on page 176-177 of his Refusal of Work:  Overstuffing leisure time with toys is a fruitless way of trying to increase enjoyment, since the more lux   ury goods one buys, the less satisfaction one is able to derive from each object in the finite time available.

  • The chronopolitics of consumer anxiety

    From David Frayne’s Refusal of Work, pg 173-174: When today’s affluent workers come home after a hard day’s work, they find themselves in their homes, surrounded by objects that all represent invitations for action. In my own home I find a Netflix account bursting with viewing choices, a set of shelves crammed with CDs, a…

  • Gorz’s concept of hygiene 

    A great introduction to this concept I was previously unfamiliar with, from David Frayne’s Refusal of Work, pg 149: As Bruce described his self-care habits, I was reminded of Gorz’s definition of ‘hygiene’, which for Gorz means something much more than the mundane rituals of preening and cleanliness. For Gorz, hygiene consists in a more…

  • The Work Dogma and Contraction of the Existential Imagination

    I found this argument, in David Frayne’s excellent Refusal of Work, deeply persuasive. From pg 110: Employment itself can be held partly responsible for the negative experiences of joblessness because, in allowing people only a limited space in which to cultivate other interests, skills and social ties, full-time jobs can often leave people with few personal…

  • The Sociological Review Annual Sociology Lecture

    The Sociological Review Annual Sociology Lecture  Friday May 20th 2016, 17.45-21.00 SOAS, University of London This event is free but it is essential to register. To reserve a place, please email Jenny Thatcher [events@thesociologicalreview.com]. Keynote: Professor Éric Fassin (Université Paris-8)  Discussants: Professor Gurminder K Bhambra (University of Warwick, UK and Linnaeus University, Sweden) and Dr…

  • Re-orienting Sociological Thought: May 11th at @CardiffSOCSI

    Re-orienting Sociological Thought?                                Glamorgan Council Chamber, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences Cardiff University 2pm to 4pm, Wednesday, May 11th 2016 In recent years, we’ve seen the proliferation of calls to reorientate sociological thought around new concerns, methodologies and approaches that can ground the discipline in changing times. This symposium brings together advocates of…

  • The Fracturing of Free Time

    From Refusal of Work by David Frayne, pg 70: Consider the extent to which the standard eight-hour working day fractures free-time into shards. The full-time worker experiences time as a rapid series of discrete pockets: a constantly rotating cycle of work periods and free periods, in which free-time is restricted to evenings, weekends and holidays.…

  • I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead

  • all the world is green

    I fell into the ocean When you became my wife I risked it all aganist the sea To have a better life Marie you’re the wild blue sky And men do foolish things You turn kings into beggars And beggars into kings Pretend that you owe me nothing And all the world is green We…