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  • Relational Traces

  • How depoliticisation and political polarisation co-exist in American politics 

    From The Deep State, by Mike Lofgren, pg 231. This strikes me as a really important point: politicians are insulated from external pressures while nonetheless having their behaviour shaped all the more by internal pressures, driving a political polarisation which can seem prima facie like the intensification of politicisation rather than its diminuation: Thanks to the…

  • A capitalism-friendly version of social mobility

    A really enticing analysis by Evgeny Morozov of the “eventual depoliticization of extremely political and contentious issues by wrapping them up in the empty, futuristic language of technology and innovation”. Silicon Valley increasingly dominates the discursive representation of our global future, with the amelioration of social problems limited to a technologically-driven intensification of consumption: Like…

  • RoboPresident: Politics in an Algorithmic World

    This contains a really interesting idea that hadn’t occurred to me previously: bots can be seen as user-driven tactics to evade and overcome the limitations of platforms. There’s a really interesting paper about bots in the Sociological Review here.

  • There are many ways to keep a digital research journal other than blogging

    At a talk I did earlier in the week, I was asked about my focus on using social media to work ideas out in public. This is something I find myself talking about a lot, not least of all because it has been such a consistently valuable experience for me. But as the questioner observed, this isn’t appropriate…

  • Claude Shannon – Father of the Information Age

    Thanks to Mark Johnson for introducing me to the intriguing figure of Claude Shannon:  

  • The Internal Immigration of the American Elite

    From The Deep State, by Mike Lofgren, pg 123-125: By secession, I do not mean physical withdrawal from the territory of the state, although that does happen from time to time. Erik Prince, who was born into a fortune, is related by marriage to the even bigger Amway fortune, and made yet another fortune as…

  • The defensiveness of contemporary elites 

    From The Deep State, by Mike Lofgren, pg 86-87. I’m beginning to try and catalogue public examples of this defensiveness because some of the over-reactions seem fascinatingly unbalanced: It is surprising how much fear his timid policies have generated among the big-money boys. There are no rational grounds for the hyperthyroid reactions of hedge fund…

  • The Political Socialisation of Presidents and Politicians

    Barack Obama quoted in The Deep State, by Mike Lofgren, pg 63. The demands of fundraising for US politicians are exceptional but I assume a similar process can be found elsewhere, as an elite gradually becomes one’s reference group if this was not already the case. How else to explain the belief of UK MPs…

  • Early Career Researcher Event: Sociological Review Writing Retreat

    The Sociological Review Foundation is delighted to announce that we have commissioned Rowena Murray to deliver a Writing Retreat for sociologists. Murray has devised and delivered structured writing retreats to support academics by providing dedicated writing time done in a group setting. To find out more about this approach see:http://www.rowenamurray.org/aims/references/ The retreat is for academics at all…

  • Data, Society and the Self: Digital Sociology in Theory and Practice

    A two-day postgraduate workshop that explores, defines and practices digital sociological research Are you curious about Digital Sociology? Consider, or already conducting, a postgraduate study on the subject? Want to explore the relations between Data, Society and the Self? Want to meet digital sociologists? Come and enjoy two days of roundtables, masterclasses, a research workshop…

  • The Sociological Review Annual Sociology Lecture

    The Sociological Review Annual Sociology Lecture Friday May 20th 2016, 17.45-21.00 SOAS, University of London Keynote: Professor Éric Fassin (Université Paris-8) Discussants: Professor Gurminder K Bhambra (University of Warwick, UK and Linnaeus University, Sweden) and Dr Imogen Tyler (Lancaster University) Professor Éric Fassin will bring together the disciplines of anthropology and sociology to demonstrate how…

  • things that I’ve been reading recently #20

    Sustainable Knowledge by Robert Frodeman Trump’s Executive Orders by Tim Patrius Rethinking Interdisciplinarity by Felicity Callard and Des Fitzgerald Social Media in Academia by George Veletsianos Accelerating Academia by Filip Vostal Humans Need Not Apply by Jeremy Kaplan Confidence Men by Ron Suskind The Academy Diary by Les Back Average Is Over by Tyler Cowan Blood On Snow by Jo Nesbo Graphic…

  • Franklin Roosevelt on threats to democracy 

    This address to Congress seems remarkably relevant given current events in the United States. It’s quoted in The Deep State, by  Mike Lofgren, page 30: Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if…

  • The performative pressures posed by presidency 

    From The Confidence Men, by Ron Suskind, pg 789: During so many days of crisis in his first two years, Obama often felt that performance pressure—having to play the part of president, in charge and confident, each day, in front of his seasoned, combative, prideful team, many of whom had, all together, recently served another…

  • Two free workshops at the Centre for Social Ontology

    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…

  • Call for Blog Posts: the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Sociologist

    The notion of ‘publish or perish’ has become something of a cliché. But its reality is starkly confirmed by the sheer quantity of scholarly literature produced each year, with an estimated 28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals publishing around 1.8-1.9 million articles in 2012. How much of this literature is written as a contribution to knowledge and…

  • What are ‘working papers’ for when we have social media?

    I’ve always had an odd fascination with working papers. I like seeing ‘ideas in motion’ and I often suspect that much of value gets chipped away through the disciplinary process of peer review that I (reluctantly) recognise is a necessary feature of our intellectual landscape. However simply publishing a PDF on a university website doesn’t quite do justice…

  • The Pleasures of Scholarly Blogging

    There’s a lovely extract of the Academic Diary in which Les Back reflects on the life and work of the social theorist Vic Seidler. Remarking on the vast range of topics on which Seidler has written, Les suggests that this deeply committed man “writes not because his academic position expects it but because he has something…

  • Why Digital Sociology Will Always Be Public Sociology and Vice Versa

    Notes for an event on Reorienting Sociological Thought at Cardiff University in May. The idea for this event is that we each discus a prominent call to reorientate sociological thought and make a case for it. I agreed today to talk about public sociology rather than digital sociology, but it’s difficult to stick to this distinction because,…

  • Cognitive triage in politics

    How widespread is this? From The Confidence Men, by Ron Suskind, pg 585: Emanuel, with his day-to-day focus on “getting points on the board,” scrambled for quick results, trying to win each day’s news cycle. As Bob Rubin told one of his many acolytes in the White House during a phone call, “Rahm’s more inclined…

  • Notes on the Uberisation of Doctoral Education

    Notes for a panel I’m doing in April with Claire Aitchison, Inger Mewburn & Pat Thomson. The idea for the panel was partly provoked by this Discover Society piece. I’m an enthusiast about social media for academics. But for all the examples I see around me of social media enriching and enhancing scholarly practice, it’s hard…

  • the purpose of the morphogenetic approach and the role of social ontology

    I’m just doing some late stage proof reading for the collection of Margaret Archer’s papers I’ve edited with Tom Brock and Graham Scambler. This passage from the revised introduction to the Social Origins of Educational Systems really jumped out to me, both because of the forcefulness with which it sets out her intellectual project and also…

  • Using social media to ‘inhabit the attentiveness of another writer’

    There’s a lovely reflection in Les Back’s Academic Diary, released soon by Goldsmiths Press, concerning the role of Twitter in academic life. He suggests that Twitter sometimes facilitates our “inhabiting the attentiveness of another writer” by providing “signposts pointing to things going on in the world: a great article, an important book, a breaking story”.…

  • Richard Rorty predicted Trumpism

    Lovely spot by Chris Hedges from a book I read many years ago which, as far as I can tell, made nearly zero impression on me at the time. This quotes from Rorty’s Achieving Our Country: Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in…

  • Two free workshops at the Centre for Social Ontology @SocioWarwick

    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…

  • Call for Blog Posts: the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Sociologist

    The notion of ‘publish or perish’ has become something of a cliché. But its reality is starkly confirmed by the sheer quantity of scholarly literature produced each year, with an estimated 28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals publishing around 1.8-1.9 million articles in 2012. How much of this literature is written as a contribution to knowledge and…

  • ‘Slow walking’ as a post-democratic tactic

    From The Confidence Men, by Ron Suskind, pg 459: Geithner denied the charge, later made in internal White House documents, that “once a decision is made, implementation by the Department of the Treasury has at times been slow and uneven,” and that “these factors all adversely affect execution of the policy process.” The parlance for…

  • An Introduction to Asexuality by the BBC

    I’m not hugely keen on the introduction but the short interviews are really moving:

  • Market liberalism and the foreclosure of politics

    I just came across a stunning quote by Larry Summers, economic and policy doyen of the Democratic establishment, reflecting on the rise of inequality in America. It’s from The Confidence Men, by Ron Suskind, pg 363: “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated…

  • Imagining the paramilitarization of Trumpism

    I’ve wondered recently if my world view is becoming a little grim. On a number of occasions recently, I’ve done a talk which I can feel has gone down well and yet I’ve managed to depress my audience about the state of the world in the process. It’s for this reason that I’ve resisted tweeting…

  • George Veletsianos on Networked Scholars

    An interesting talk by George Veletsianos whose recent book, Social Media in Academia, I’ll review in the near(ish) future. I found it a thought provoking read but I want to critically engage with his conception of ‘networked scholars’ in order to better articulate why I prefer to conceptualise this quite straight forwardly in terms of ‘academics’ i.e.…

  • The Republican elite are now openly declaring their contempt for the American white working class 

    Thanks to Mark Thoma for flagging up an astonishing article published in the journal of the GOP’s intellectual elite. Is this something once unspoken now being given voice? If we are concerned about Trump’s authoritarianism, should we be equally concerned about the potentially terrifying actions liable to be licensed by such naked contempt for vast…

  • A pleasing pile of books 

     

  • Out Now: Social Media for Academics

    Very pleased that my book is now out. You can see endorsements of it here and there’s a chapter available online here. Get in touch if you’d like a discount code for it.

  • music I find inexplicably conducive to writing #23

  • Violence as the expression of Trump’s nascent ideology

    I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s been getting a little bit obsessed with Donald Trump in recent months. There’s certainly a risk of overstating the threat that he poses, such that a preoccupation with the man himself risks obscuring the systemic conditions that have facilitated his emerging status, but I’m increasingly convinced we’re witnessing what…

  • The Accleration of Political Rhetoric

    From Confidence Men, by Ron Susskind, pg 23-24: But it was hard to know how even Lincoln’s rhetorical genius would have met the awesome challenge of modern politics: to explain hugely complex problems and offer first-step solutions in all of sixty seconds. Hillary Clinton could do it just like Lincoln split wood: steady and true,…

  • The LSE’s remarkable archive of public talks

    I just stumbled across the LSE’s Digital Archive. It’s an absolute goldmine. Here are some of the ones I’m planning to listen to in the near future: Niklas Luhmann (1995) Bruno Latour (2000) Steven Lukes (2006) Erik Olin Wright (2001) Tony Giddens (2000) David Harvey (1999) Charles Tilly (2005) Julian LeGrand (2006) Ernest Gellner (1994) Henry…

  • an uncertain future (for other people’s jobs)

    I gave a lecture earlier this week about the cultural politics of automation and how this might shape the emergence of mass automation as a primarily structural reality.  I wish I’d seen this Pew poll when I was preparing the lecture: This sense of the inexorability of mass automation is deeply worrying. It’s possible that people might begin to see…

  • Ontographology Cards: Oblique Strategies for Interdisciplinary Teams (sort of)

    This is my first attempt to write up an ongoing project I’m in the early stages of undertaking, as well as solicit much needed feedback on it. It’s emerged from the Digital Social Science forum I’ve put together for the Independent Social Research Foundation. The forum has been setup to develop an interdisciplinary space within…

  • The Politics of the Platform Society

    This is a great talk by José van Dijck. I can’t wait for her new book: There are some excellent responses by Sonia Livingstone, suggesting we need to be critical of an emerging grand narrative of the platform society. It meshes nicely with the observation made by Adrian McKenzie that ‘algorithms’ have replaced ‘discourse’ as the…

  • New Racisms II: Neoliberalism and its Others

    New Racisms II: Neoliberalism and its Others 9th and 10th June 2016 Venue: Silverstone Building, University of Sussex, Brighton UK Speakers Gargi Bhattacharyya, University of East London – author of Traffick, the illicit movement of people and things and Dangerous Brown Men. Arun Kundnani – author of ‘The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the…

  • Why Digitalization is Prior to Financialization

    From Rise of the Robots, by Martin Ford, loc 1053-1069: Virtually all of the financial innovations that have arisen in recent decades—including, for example, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and exotic financial derivatives—would not have been possible without access to powerful computers. Likewise, automated trading algorithms are now responsible for nearly two-thirds of stock market trades,…

  • Henry Rollins on the pleasures of acceleration

    At various points in the last year, I’ve made the argument that acceleration can serve to “reduce the time available for reflexivity, ‘blotting out’ difficult questions in a way analogous to drink and drugs”. My point is that this is pleasurable: it’s something that people embrace because of the satisfactions they find in it, the thrill of moving…

  • The Politics of an Uncertain Future

    The rise of the robots is a recurrent theme of popular culture. Robots are often seen as a threat, heralding the prospect of human beings being replaced by their creations, perhaps to the extent of being deemed useless by them and attacked. Underlying this fear is the reality of automation: technology being more adept at particular tasks…

  • Writing praxes beyond papers and books

    A really fascinating reflection by Rob Kitchin on ten forms of academic writing beyond scholarly papers and books: fiction, blog posts, newspaper op eds, email correspondence, policy papers, policy consultation, a television documentary script, powerpoint slides, academic papers, and grant application. What makes this so interesting is that all of these were deployed in relation to the…

  • Creating and Exploring Digital Empathy

    Creating and Exploring Digital Empathy (CEDE) is an EPSRC-funded research project jointly held between UCL, the University of Sheffield and Lancaster University.  The CEDE project had five core aims and objectives: To explore and develop the concept of Digital Empathy and how it can be facilitated via innovative methods; To improve quality of life by enabling…

  • YouTube Conference: Call for Papers

    YouTube Conference: Call for Papers 23/4 September 2016, Middlesex University, The Burroughs, Hendon, London. Keynote speaker: Professor Jean Burgess Please send an abstract of 350 words plus a short bio of 100 words for single papers or 500 words and individual bios for group panels by email attachment to youtube@mdx.ac.uk<mailto:youtube@mdx.ac.uk>. Deadline for receipt of abstracts…

  • stuck in the mess of life: anticipation and disappointment

    In recent papers Ruth Müller has offered what I think is the very important concept of anticipatory acceleration to make sense of how subjects, in this case post-doctoral researchers, wilfully participate in social acceleration. Drawing on the work of James Scott, she outlines an attitude of ‘disregard for the present’: The present figured not as important in and…

  • defensive elites and the actions they’re willing to take

    This is a fascinating account in Mother Jones of the, seemingly botched, attempt by the Koch brothers and their political organisation to smear a New York Times journalist: Prize-winning New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer made headlines recently when she released a new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the…

  • Henry Rollins was on BBC Hard Talk!

  • Henry Rollins on drugs, alcohol & self-transformation

    I always find Henry Rollins interesting to listen to. But this interview is particularly engaging, even by his standards: It suddenly struck me how obviously this song is about self-transcendence:

  • The first year of the Accelerated Academy project

    After a year’s work, we’re pleasingly getting to the end of the first phase of the Accelerated Academy project. Here’s what we have to show for it: Keynote lectures and videos from the event An introductory reading list Podcasts from the conference Interviews with Maggie O’Neill and Roger Burrows Our first paper is still under review…

  • Early Career Researcher Event @TheSocReview: A Master-Class with Professor Éric Fassin

    The Sociological Review Foundation invites applicants to take part in a masterclass with Éric Fassin, who will delivering our Annual Public Lecture on the same day at SOAS at 6pm. The master-class will explore: How are sex, gender and sexuality racialised in contemporary Europe and the world? In what ways are nation-states implicated in sexual…

  • The Reactionary Politics of Tech Bros

    A slogan more frequently encountered on pro-police demos has been repeatedly daubed inside the Facebook headquarters, creating embarrassment for a corporation whose staff are overwhelmingly white and male: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reprimanded employees following several incidents in which the slogan “black lives matter” was crossed out and replaced with “all lives matter” on the walls…

  • The advice given by W.E.B. Dubois to his teenage daughter

    An absolutely beautiful snippet from Brain Pickings: the letter of advice W.E.B. Dubois wrote to his teenage daughter when she went away to school in England. Dear Little Daughter: I have waited for you to get well settled before writing. By this time I hope some of the strangeness has worn off and that my little girl…

  • “Let Me Stay”: Exhibition on Housing Insecurity in Manchester

    Glasgow artist Penny Anderson’s first exhibition in Manchester, in association with the Social Action and Research Foundation, presents work that interrogates the modern fact that we do not remain in a rented home for a life-time, with many tenants having to move house every six months. ‘Let Me Stay’ uses the traditional craft of embroidered…

  • The Promise of the Pivot Format

    Recent years have seen the proliferation of what I tend to think of as mini-mongraph formats. In their new book on interdisciplinarity, Felicity Callard and Des Fitzgerald offer a really nice account of the promise of these formats: The Pivot format is produced within a distinctive (rapid) temporal horizon, and offers a particular length (mid-way…

  • Protest and Performance Week @WarwickUni

    Sad I can’t make this, shared in case others can: Protest and Performance Week will take place on campus in week 10, from Monday 14th – Thursday 17th March 2016. It includes film, comedy, theatre and panel discussions. All events are free (except the film – reduced price tickets available) and open to everyone. You…

  • On Subculture

  • “feeling more or less alive on different days”

    I came across this wonderful passage by William James, quoted by Robert Frodeman in Sustainable Knowledge and reproduced on Brainpickings here: Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Every one knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of…

  • Two upcoming events @socialontology @sociowarwick

    A workshop on 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,…

  • The Vertigo of the Accelerated Academy

    From Sustainable Knowledge by Robert Frodeman, loc 1257: I feel like I am drowning in knowledge, and the idea of further production is daunting. Libraries and bookstores produce a sense of anxiety: the number of books and journals to read is overwhelming, with tens of thousands more issuing from the presses each day. Moreover, there…

  • John McDonnell’s New Socialism

    I listened to this earlier today and I was really impressed: It’s part of a broader intellectual project in meetings currently taking place around the country. Hopefully one in Manchester soon! Here’s the list.

  • The Sex Myth

    I first encountered the work of Rachel Hills in 2012, when she interviewed me for an essay in the Atlantic exploring asexuality. The conversation itself was incredibly stimulating and the ensuing piece of work was the best thing I’ve read about asexuality in the media. I’ve been waiting since then for her book, The Sex…

  • There are no strings on me

  • Why I’m never buying another @Jawbone product & wonder if the wearables bubble will soon burst

    I was really taken with my initial Jawbone Up24. Unfortunately, after around 9 months, it suddenly ceased to be able to hold a charge. The technical support was responsive but it was a long tedious process in which they insisted on ruling out every possibility before sending me a replacement, with the warning that it…

  • CfP: Data Friction

    AAA 2016 CFP Data Friction As the range of devices that translate bodies, states, and lives into digital data continues to expand, the way digital data expresses lived experience has garnered both popular and scholarly attention.  In popular culture the traffic of data between devices and people has been chiefly aligned with a capacity for…

  • The Pathology of the Super-Rich

    My favourite messianic political commentator on a subject that fascinates me:

  • CfP: Contemporary Political Youth Culture and Communication

    Call for Papers Contemporary Political Youth Culture and Communication http://www.york.ac.uk/sociology/research/groups/cpac/#tab-7 A two-day Symposium University of York, UK. 18-20 July 2016. Deadline for abstracts: Monday 14th March 2016 Marking the launch of the Centre for Political Youth Culture and Communication (CPAC) this two-day international symposium explores the socio-cultural factors influencing the civic engagement of young people…

  • On Techno-Fascism

    I’m really enjoying Humans Need Not Apply by Jerry Kaplan. Much more so than I expected to in fact. He offers a thoughtful and incisive insider’s critique, in the style of a less verbose Jaron Lanier, concerning the likely trajectory of contemporary digital capitalism. On pg 105 he writes about the “new regime” creeping up on…

  • The Coming Monopolies of Digital Capitalism

    From Humans Need Not Apply, by Jerry Kaplan, pg 101-102: there’s another reason the financial markets value the company at more than six hundred times earnings (2013), when the average is around twenty times earnings: they look forward to the inevitable time when the company extracts monopoly prices after locking in its customers and scorching…

  • Viral lift

    An interesting snippet in this Fast Company profile of BuzzFeed about their viral lift metric and how this trumps page views as a measure of success: Stopera, an Internet savant so steeped in pop culture that he appeared on an episode of MTV’s Fanography as a teenager for his “psychotic” love of Britney Spears, is explaining how he…

  • The Videos from @AcceleratedUni

    Interviews with the keynotes: The keynotes themselves:

  • CfP: Digital Health & Digital Capitalism

    Plenary speakers announced: Nick Fox – Professor of Sociology, The University of Sheffield ‘The micropolitical economy of posthuman health’ Graham Scambler – Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University College London ‘Digital sociology or sociology of the digital? A case study on health.’ This is your last chance to also speak at the event  by submitting your abstract for the…

  • Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled

  • CFP: AOIR 2016 panel – ‘the playful web’

    CfP: AoIR 2016 panel – ‘the playful web’ We solicit papers for a panel considering the notion of ‘play’ as a framework for conceptualising internet research. Most existing scholarship exploring play in relation to internet technologies concentrates on games and gaming (Salen and Zimmerman 2003; Juul 2003; Boellstorff 2008; Nardi 2010). Whilst undoubtedly important, little…

  • Engaging with participation, activism and technologies

    CONFERENCE THEME: ENGAGING WITH PARTICIPATION, ACTIVISM, AND TECHNOLOGIES 13th Prato CIRN Conference 2-4 November 2016, Monash Centre, Prato Italy http://cirn.wikispaces.com/Conference+2016 For some years now the CIRN Prato conference has focused on the intersection between Community Informatics (CI), Development Informatics (DI), and Community Archiving (CA). In particular, the 2015 conference focused on information and knowledge as…

  • Everyday analytics: The politics and practices of self-monitoring

    There’s so much good stuff at 4S. Wish I had the resources to go, in spite of the fact it’s not hugely important to anything I’m doing in a direct sense: We welcome submissions to our open track on ‘everyday analytics’ at 4S/EASST, Barcelona, 2016 Track convenors: Kate Weiner, Catherine Will, Minna Ruckenstein, Christopher Till and Flis Henwood,…

  • Say More Fire

  • CfP for AOIR2016: Panel/Roundtable on “Aging in a Digital World”

    CfP: Panel/Roundtable on ‘Aging in a Digital World” We are looking for some additional participants for either a roundtable or panel submission to #AoIR2016 in Berlin on the topic of “Aging in a Digital World.” Specifically, we are looking for works that highlight the intersection of the internet with later life (50+ years). In keeping…

  • The Escalation Dynamics of Social Media

    One of the crucial ideas for my new book are the temporal implications of the escalation dynamics which characterise social media platforms. In his Social Media in Academia, George Veletsianos identifies precisely the dynamic that interests me. From loc 834: [R]emaining visible on a social networking and fast-moving platform such as Twitter means that one has to share often and frequently,…

  • Open access as a mechanism for the acceleration of higher education

    An interesting extract from Social Media in Academia, by George Veletsianos, conveying one reason why I’m instinctively cautious about open access. From loc 614-631: empirical evidence relating to citation metrics indicates that OA articles may be cited earlier than NOA articles (Eysenbach, 2006; Zawacki-Richter, Anderson, & Tuncay, 2010), suggesting that OA may allow faster access…

  • The imposter syndrome of the young Neil Gaiman

    I love this description by Neil Gaiman of his experience of imposter syndrome early in his career, quoted in Presence by Amy Cuddy: I would have this recurring fantasy in which there would be a knock on the door, and I would go down, and there would be somebody wearing a suit not an expensive suit, just…

  • Call for Papers: Political Citizenship and Social Movements

    BSA Citizenship Study Group and the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on Citizenship: Political Citizenship and Social Movements University of Portsmouth, 27-28 June 2016 Sponsored by University of Portsmouth’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Citizenship, ‘Race’ and Belonging Research Group and the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Keynote Speakers: Prof Engin…

  • CFP for the themed issue of ‘Subjectivity’ on Radical Negativity

    *CALL FOR PAPERS: Themed issue on ‘Radical negativity’*Over the past decade, feminist and queer scholarship has begun to productively address the dark aspects of human subjectivity, such as unhappiness, irresponsibility, passivity, vulnerability, failure, shame, hesitancy, pain, dispossession, disappointment, rage, madness and depression, contributing to a rethinking and revaluation of the negative. Critique has focused on…

  • The Skilled Demagoguery of Donald J. Trump

    This is disturbing and skilful stuff. A performance of populism quite unlike the rhetoric of it which we’re much more familiar with: “The other night in the debate,” he told thousands in Manchester, “they asked Ted Cruz a serious question: what do you think of waterboarding? Is it OK? I thought he’d say absolutely, and he didn’t. And…