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  • Forced migration & digital connectivity in Europe

    Dear list members, Kevin Smets (postdoc, University of Antwerp, Belgium) and Koen Leurs (assistant professor Gender & Postcolonial Studies, Utrecht University, the Netherlands) are sending out this email to see whether there are people on the list interested in submitting a panel / roundtable proposal on ‘Forced migration & digital connectivity in Europe’ for the…

  • Silicon Valley: The New Welfare State?

  • Special Issue of Discover Society on Digital Futures

    Co-edited by Mark Carrigan and William Housley Social media is conventionally located within a commercial narrative that theorises an array of emerging ‘disruptive technologies’ that includes big data, additive manufacture and robotics. These and related technologies are underpinned by computational developments that are networked, distributed, digital and data driven. It has been argued that these…

  • things that I’ve been reading recently #19

    Battle of the Titans – Fred Vogelstein The Internet of Garbage – Sarah Jeong The Hard Things About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz The Sex Myth – Rachel Hills Essential Zen Habits – Leo Babauta Graphic Novels: Daredevil: The Biography of Matt Murdock – Mark Waid DMZ: Diary of a Journalist – Brian Wood X-Men vs Apocalypse…

  • 17 podcasts about realist social theory

  • 35 podcasts about #digitalsociology

  • the inanity of post-democratic political leaders

  • Fictive Futures: Exploring Future Research Agendas

    — Fictive Futures: Exploring Future Research Agendas — * Submission Deadline: Friday, February 12, 2016 * Decisions Announced: Friday, April 22, 2016 GROUP Conference at Sanibel Island, FL: November 13-16, 2016 We seek submissions that imagine possible futures for research on the relationships between computers and people. Submissions will include two portions: a fictional document…

  • Call for Papers: Cunning Knowledge and Media Technologi

    Call for Papers: Cunning Knowledge and Media Technologies *Platform: Journal of Media and Communication* http://platformjmc.com An interdisciplinary journal for early career researchers and graduate students Volume editor: Christopher O’Neill Abstract submissions due: *5th of March, 2016* Full paper submissions due: *20th of May, 2016* Everyone is on the side of the cunning. Media, communications, and…

  • 6th annual International Symposium on Digital Ethics

    Call for abstracts The Center for Digital Ethics & Policy at Loyola University Chicago (digitalethics.org) will be holding its 6th annual International Symposium on Digital Ethics on Nov 4th, 2016.  The keynote speaker will be Professor Lilie Chouliaraki from the London School of Economics. We are looking for papers on digital ethics.  Topics might include…

  • unpicking the political economy of digital cats

    Much deserved Guardian coverage of the weird phenomenon that is the internet cat video festival. What grips me about things like this is not the fact that people are trying to make money from their cats, but rather that many others people are trying and failing to make money from their cats. Not unlike the aspiring professional…

  • Relating to data through visualisation: three funded PhD studentships in the UK

    *Deadline for applications: 5th March 2016.* *Start date: October 2016.* *Relating To Data: understanding data through visualisation* is a network of three funded PhD studentships which focuses on how people relate to data through their visualisation, the narratives and meanings people attach to visualisations and the potential understanding produced by them. The successful candidates will…

  • modern life has let me down

  • Technology, Self and Society in an Era of Digital Rankings

  • moderating social media and the challenge of normativity

    This interesting article (HT Nick Couldry) explores the challenge faced by Facebook in imposing standards on a user base distributed around the globe: As Facebook has tentacled out from Palo Alto, Calif., gaining control of an ever-larger slice of the global commons, the network has found itself in a tenuous and culturally awkward position: how to…

  • Call for Abstracts: Themed Issue on Body Weight and Digital Media

    Call for Abstracts: Themed Issue on Body Weight and Digital Media This themed issue, to be edited by Deborah Lupton, focuses on the ways in which digital media and technologies are used to represent and manage body weight and size. It will be published in the journal Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and…

  • Should academics blog? Rather unsurprisingly I suggest that they should

    I’m getting an “argh, it’s so weird listening to my own voice” reaction for the first time in years:

  • Call for Papers: A workshop on Competition(s)

    Call for Papers A workshop on Competition(s) As part of a broader project – Performances of Value: Competition and Competitions Inside and Outside Markets – we call for papers for a workshop on Competition(s) that will take place on June 10-11, 2016 at the Copenhagen Business School. Costs for travel, lodging, and meals for workshop…

  • Special issue on Digital Evidence for Philosophy & Technology

    Call for Papers for Philosophy and Technology’s special issue on Digital Evidence GUEST EDITORS Judith Simon (IT University Copenhagen & University of Vienna) Shannon Vallor (Santa Clara University) INTRODUCTION Digital technologies of the 21st century are profoundly transforming the nature of evidence and evidential practices in a wide range of domains, including science, medicine, law,…

  • business for rappers

    I’ve written a few times recently – here, here and here – about the notion of business for punks propounded by the founder of BrewDog. This extract from loc 89 of The Hard Thing About Hard Things conveys something similar in terms of hip hop: I’ve also been inspired by many friends, advisers, and family members who have helped me…

  • the peak experiences of intensified work

    In the Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz recounts his experiences of his company Loudcloud coming close to failure. At a climatic moment, he makes a speech to his staff declaring the commitment they will have to show over the coming months. From pg 48: “I have some bad news. We are getting our…

  • Sing, Sing, Sing

  • The Epistemic Consequences of Technological Privilige

    I’ve often wondered about how the working environments within which proponents of cloud computing exist have shaped their enthusiasm for it. If your work is never interrupted by the broadband going down then it’s easier to be committed to moving all your applications into the cloud.  In Battle of the Titans, the author quotes the…

  • the messianic zeal of Eric Schmidt

    A bit later in Battle of the Titans, Fred Vogelstein transcribes a talk he saw Eric Schmidt give at a technology conference. From loc 1904-1918: We have a product that allows 82 you to speak to your phone in English and have it come out in the native language of the person you are talking to.…

  • things that I’ve been reading recently #18

    Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo by Nicholas Carlson In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy Zero To One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet by Finn Brunton How Google Works by Eric…

  • the carefully cultivated public persona of Eric Schmidt

    From Battle of the Titans loc 1846: Anyone who has ever worked for Schmidt will tell you that he is one of the toughest, most competitive executives walking. Ask Rubin what it was like to be on the receiving end of a few “Don’t fuck it up” lectures from Schmidt. “Not fun,” Rubin says. But…

  • theorising socio-materiality: strong and weak processes

    In this extremely important paper, Alistair Mutch offers a realist critique of sociomateriality which I hope to further develop in my own work in the not too distant future. In it he argues that sociomaterial “approaches tend towards a perverse (given the promise of the concept) neglect of the specificity of the systems involved and an…

  • the creative destruction of intra-organisational conflict

    From Battle of the Titans loc 1056: From his office on the second floor of IL 2 on Apple’s campus, Forstall started pulling in some of the best engineers from around the company, creating lockdown areas all over the building as he went. “If you were working weekends, you’d see the construction crews come in…

  • business for punks from the bottom-up

    In the last week, I’ve been exploring the notion of ‘business for punks’, the philosophy propounded by the founder of BrewDog, as the formulation of an increasingly dominant ethos in which ‘disruptive’ corporate activity is valorised as anti-authoritarian. I’ve been thinking about this mostly from the top-down, as a characteristic of founders and CEOs, but…

  • CfP: Freedom and Control of Expression in the Digital Aftermath of the 2015 Paris Attacks

    This looks great! One of those things too far outside my area to contribute to but I’d love to attend, if only there were unlimited time and travel budget in my life: Freedom and Control of Expression in the Digital Aftermath of the 2015 Paris Attacks, Workshop in Toulouse, France, October 13 & 14 2016…

  • About Today

    Today you were far away and I didn’t ask you why What could I say I was far away You just walked away and I just watched you What could I say How close am I to losing you Tonight you just close your eyes and I just watch you slip away How close am…

  • the obsessive secrecy of Apple

    From Battle of the Titans loc 543. I’m intruiged by non-disclosure of non-disclosure agreements: why stop there? Surely this could be grounds for an infinite loop? More seriously, I wonder how this effects the framing of the proposition to potential staff: is there a performative element to this in order to convey the importance of…

  • the psychology of business for punks

    I wrote last week about the notion of ‘business for punks’ propounded by the founder of BrewDog. This little snippet from Battle of the Titans reflects a similar ethos. Is Silicon Valley full of people who understand themselves as ‘doing business for punks’: is this the ethos underlying a commitment to ‘disruption’? From loc 333: Jobs…

  • The Platform Wars

    From Battle of the Titans, loc 113-127. This dynamic seems likely to intensify with time: A lot of what we buy via Apple’s iTunes store—apps, music, movies, TV shows, books, etc.—doesn’t work easily on Android devices or at all, and vice versa. And both companies know that the more money each of us spends on…

  • on nihilism and hope

    A remarkable passage by the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips at the end of his Forbidden Pleasures, pg 181. We have to choose between them: the stark nature of the dichotomy is often unclear but this is little more than wilful obsfucation, on the part of the social order if not the individual. To give up on hope…

  • FutureVision?! Which life do we want?

    FutureVision?! Which life do we want? Vienna, 30 March – 1 April, 2016 The European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research will be held in Vienna from March 30 to April 1, 2016. It will be the first pop up conference meeting in the field of Systems Science, called emcsr avantgarde. The name reflects the vision and…

  • Making The Familiar Strange: A Festival of Critical Social Thought

    A small collective is currently in the early stages of planning Making The Familiar Strange: A Festival of Critical Social Thought for summer 2017. See here for some background to the event. If you’d like to get involved, we’re having a planning meeting: Tuesday 23rd February 12:00-16:00. Room G05 (ground floor) of Cloth Hall Court Leeds Beckett…

  • the discourse of ‘burn out’ in silicon valley

    A weird little snippet I came across from Marissa Mayer, former Google high-flyer and now head of Yahoo, on how to avoid burnout by “empowering” yourself to “work really hard for a long period of time”. Find one thing you absolutely refuse to miss then completely subordinate the rest of your life to your work, safe…

  • anonymity, velocity, extensity and traceability as characteristics of online action

    From pg 42 of Being Digital Citizens by Evelyn Ruppert and Engin Isin: The first concerns anonymity. Being anonymous in cyberspace has several complex meanings that are different from being anonymous or even making rights claims to being anonymous. It is not surprising that one of the most recognizable if troubling acts on the Internet…

  • The origin of the phrase “cloud computing”

    Very interesting snippet at the end of How Google Works, loc 3859: It’s called “cloud computing” because the old programs to draw network schematics surrounded the icons for servers with a circle. A cluster of servers in a network diagram had several overlapping circles, which resembled a cloud.

  • Critical Realism 2016 reminder

    Deadline 31 Jan 2016. Submission guidelines on: http://tinyurl.com/jrh3jdj We are also delighted to inform you about the following developments: 1. We are currently applying for funding to support PhD students. If you would like to be considered for a grant, please mention it on your abstract. 2. Our Yale colleagues (Margarita Mooney, Phil Gorski, Tim Rutzou) will be…

  • Geoblocking and Global Video Culture

    GEOBLOCKING AND GLOBAL VIDEO CULTURE Eds. Ramon Lobato and James Meese Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2016 How do global audiences use streaming platforms like YouTube, Netflix and iPlayer? How does the experience of digital video change according to location? What strategies do people use to access out-of-region content? What are the commercial and governmental…

  • Social Science History Association 2016 CFP

    SSHA CALL FOR PAPERS Macrohistorical Dynamics Network 41st Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association Chicago IL 17-20 November 2016 Submission Deadline: 20 February 2016 “Knowledge in an Interdisciplinary World” We invite you to take part in Macrohistorical Dynamics (MHD) panels of the 41th annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, November 17-20,…

  • Call for Applications: International Visiting Fellowships in Critical Digital & Social Media Research

    Call for Applications: International Visiting Fellowships in Critical Digital & Social Media Research The Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS) www.westminster.ac.uk/wias is a newly created academic space at the University of Westminster in London for independent critical thinking beyond borders. Its inaugural research theme is Critical Digital & Social Media Research. One of the WIAS’ key features…

  • No Surrender

    Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold We swore blood brothers against the wind I’m ready to grow young again And hear your sister’s voice calling us home across the open yards Well maybe we could cut someplace of our own With these drums and these guitars Blood brothers…

  • Love, Ire & Song

    Well, it was bad enough the feeling, and the first time it hit When you realised your parents had let the world all go to shit And that the values and ideals for which many had fought and died Had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside But it…

  • the reality of ‘20% time’ at Google

    One of Google’s most famous perks is the ‘20% rule’, in which staff are allowed a portion of time to work on their own projects. However as Eric Schmidt and his co-author explain in How Google Works, this isn’t a matter of time as such. From loc 3210: This is the power of 20 percent…

  • on ‘disruption’ and ‘innovation’

    Even though I believe the concepts of ‘innovation’ and ‘disruption’ refer to sociologically significant phenomena, I cringe slightly whenever I hear someone use the terms. Particularly in the case of the latter, a whole theory of social change at the meso level is implicit within it: it’s deeply ideological and we need to unpack it, rather…

  • the intensification of demands upon managers 

    I read this description of Schmidt in How Google Works and it immediately prompted the question of how this behaviour percolates down the food chain. How does a Google exec who fails this test then act in relation to their own subordinates? Loc 2524: John Seely Brown, the former director of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research…

  • the traditional model of information flow within organisations

    From How Google Works loc 2454-2466: Here’s a way to think about corporate communications: Picture a twenty-story building. You are on a middle floor, say the tenth, standing on a balcony. The number of people on each floor decreases as you go up. The top floor is occupied by just one person, while the bottom…

  • the sociology of executive coaching

    As you may know, executive coaching is an increasingly common phenomenon, particularly in some sectors like tech. This is how Eric Schmidt and his co-author describe the necessity of it in How Google Works loc 2440: Whenever you watch a world-class athlete perform, you can be sure that there is a great coach behind her success.…

  • the ‘via’ link as a continuation of established social practices 

    I really like this point made by Finn Brunton on pg 221 of Spam: The “via” link has interesting parallels with other social practices: the cab driver who recommends a relative’s hotel and then adds, “Tell them I sent you,” or the advertising circular that specifies that the shopper mention where he or she saw…

  • UCU’s recent anti-casualisation work 

    I always find it irritating when people say UCU does nothing to fight against casualisation. Here’s a round up of recent activity which was sent to the anti-casualisation mailing list: A quick roundup on some of UCU’s recent work for staff on casual contracts… Latest local progress reported on our website: There are two new…

  • Interesting communications summer school for PhD students 

    Dear colleagues, Thanks to the great success of the UPEC Summer School’s 2015 edition, we are delighted to announce the launch of the Summer School 2016 and the 2nd second session of the “IMPACT program” during 3 weeks : from 4 to 22 July 2016. IMPACT program – International Media, Political Action & Communication Technologies,…

  • CfP: Manchester Social Movements conference

    SOCIAL MOVEMENTS CONFERENCE – FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS From 1995 to 2015, Manchester Metropolitan University hosted a series of very successful annual international conferences on ‘ALTERNATIVE FUTURES and POPULAR PROTEST’. We’re very happy to announce that the Twenty First AF&PP Conference will be held between Monday 21st and Wednesday 23rd March 2016. The Conference rubric will…

  • Wed, Jan 27, LSE: Emergencies of Peace: The Exceptional State of (Academic) Affairs in Contemporary Turkey

     PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELYEmergencies of Peace: The Exceptional State of (Academic) Affairs in Contemporary Turkey Wednesday, January 27, 2016 6:30 to 8:30 pm New Academic Building Room 206 LSE Dr Ayça Çubukçu, Assistant Professor in Human Rights, Centre for the Study of Human Rights / Department of Sociology, LSE (chair) Dr Esra Ozyurek, Chair of Contemporary…

  • Workshop: Multimodality in Social Media and Digital Environments

    BAAL Language and New Media SIG 2016 Workshop: Multimodality in Social Media and Digital Environments Queen Mary University of London, 15 April, 2016 CALL FOR PAPERS Gestures, positioning in space, and other forms of embodied communication are frequently recognised as bearing meaning-making potential in interpersonal interactions and print mediaalongside (or instead of) language. There is…

  • The politics and economics of Chinese new media industries

    I’d really love to know more about this topic. Apologies for the formatting: > *ICA 2016 Preconference: The politics and economics of Chinese new media > industries* > > *Call for Papers* > > *[Selected full papers will be included in a special issue for > International Communication Gazette, to be published in early-2018.]* >…

  • Collaborative Work and Social Media: Responding to the rapid spread of provocative content

    Collaborative Work and Social Media: Responding to the rapid spread of provocative content Special issue call for the Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative work  New extended deadline for submissions March 28th 2016! These call details are also available online at https://sites.google.com/site/digitalwildfireesrc/jcscw Special issue editors Marina Jirotka – University of Oxford William Housley – Cardiff University Rob…

  • Reflecting on Digital Wildfire

    Some really interesting videos from the Digital Wildfire project.

  • against a consensual theory of conventions

    In their Being Digital Citizens, Evelyn Ruppert and Engin Isin outline a theory of conventions on pg 25-26: We shall characterize conventions broadly as sociotechnical arrangements that embody norms, values, affects, laws, ideologies, and technologies. As sociotechnical arrangements, conventions involve agreement or even consent—either deliberate or often implicit—that constitutes the logic of any custom, institution,…

  • Rocky V + Rock II = Rocky VII, Adrian’s Revenge

    I’ve had this stuck in my head since seeing the (surprisingly excellent) Creed earlier this week. Glad to find it on YouTube:

  • the failed promise of ‘cyber politics’, the empowerment of defensive elites and the death of liberal democracy

    I’m enjoying Evelyn Ruppert’s new book, co-authored with Engin Isin. On page 7 of Being Digital Citizens they write: What is important to recognize is that although the Internet may not have changed politics radically in the fifteen years that separate these two studies, it has radically changed the meaning and function of being citizens…

  • flagging Facebook users showing signs of radicalisation 

    Hard to see how this could go wrong, right? During the national security meeting in San Jose, Silicon Valley executives in the room, including Sandberg and Apple’s Tim Cook, appeared open to the idea of helping Washington combat Isis online. The Guardian reported at the time that US officials asked Sandberg about Facebook’s technology that…

  • What does punk mean?

    http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/embed-player.aspx?id=3331 If the BrewDog founder is to be believed, in this podcast about his new book Business for Punks, it’s a matter of hostility towards incumbents. BrewDog were to commercial beer as Punks were to ‘pop’ (as the founder describes what punk was a reaction to). As he describes this ethos, “if we were going to…

  • CFP: Digital Media, Psychoanalysis and the Subject

    *CFP: Digital Media, Psychoanalysis and the Subject* Editors: Jacob Johanssen (University of East London / University of Westminster, UK) and Steffen Krüger (University of Oslo, Norway). Abstract: Revisiting psychoanalytic theory and practice as a potential for media and communication studies, this CfP for a special issue of CM: Communication and Media Journal, to be published…

  • the practical mastery of animals

  • Perhaps having deconstructed everything, we should be thinking about putting everything back together?

    TOO MANY TO CONVINCE TOO MANY TO HIRE AND NOTHING YOU EVER OWN THE WORLD’S A DEAD SORRY HOLE AND I’M COLD, AND I’M COLD AND IM COLD, AND I’M STUBBORN I’M SICK TO KEEP IT OPEN WIDE AND SPEAKING WORDS TO THE BLIND SPEAKING WORDS, TO THE BLIND SPEAKING WORDS, TO THE BLIND AND…

  • EPIC 2016 CfP

    Whether or not you plan to submit to EPIC2016, I hope you’ll take a look at this year’s paper tracks, where the program committee is pushing our field forward in several specific areas. Click on the links below for more substantial discussions about key topics and developments in these areas. Of course, we do hope you’ll…

  • why did something like Google not emerge earlier in the web’s history?

    A really interesting question from Finn Brunton’s Spam pg 218: An interesting question can be raised in relation to this innovative development: why is it innovative—or rather, why wasn’t such a system already normal? Citation analysis has been a common tool in social science since the Science Citation Index ® began in 1963 (with the…

  • the feudal characteristics of tech firms 

    From Peter Thiel’s Less Than Zero loc 1912: Apple’s value crucially depended on the singular vision of a particular person. This hints at the strange way in which the companies that create new technology often resemble feudal monarchies rather than organizations that are supposedly more “modern.” A unique founder can make authoritative decisions, inspire strong…

  • don’t give money to anyone wearing a suit!

    From Peter Thiel’s Less Than Zero loc 1662-1670. Does informality thrive in tech capitalism because entrepreneurs are terrified of pissing off VC’s who think like this? At Founders Fund, we saw this coming. The most obvious clue was sartorial: cleantech executives were running around wearing suits and ties. This was a huge red flag, because…

  • The obsessive homogeneity of digital elites 

    From Peter Thiel’s Less Than Zero loc 1279: Max Levchin, my co-founder at PayPal, says that startups should make their early staff as personally similar as possible. Startups have limited resources and small teams. They must work quickly and efficiently in order to survive, and that’s easier to do when everyone shares an understanding of…

  • The genesis of the PayPal Mafia

    Peter Thiel describing how the ‘PayPal Mafia’ came about in his Less Than Zero, loc 1238-1251: The first team that I built has become known in Silicon Valley as the “PayPal Mafia” because so many of my former colleagues have gone on to help each other start and invest in successful tech companies. We sold…

  • don’t let the fuckers get you down

    Don’t let the fuckers get you down Don’t let them take away this song Don’t let the fuckers get you down Don’t let them wonder why you frown Don’t let the fuckers get you down Or steal the thrill of feeling young And you can hide away the key Don’t let them take you away…

  • CfP: Citizen Science: Beyond the Laboratory

    Submission deadline: Feb 21, 2016 Submission link: http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easst/easst_4s2016/panels.php5?PanelID=4031 *Convenors* Gabriel Mugar (Syracuse University) gmugar@syr.edu<mailto:gmugar@syr.edu> Carsten Østerlund (Syracuse University) costerlu@syr.edu<mailto:costerlu@syr.edu> Andrea Wiggins (University of Maryland) wiggins@umd.edu<mailto:wiggins@umd.edu> *Abstract* Citizen science constitutes a rich and fast-evolving arena in the production of scientific knowledge, raising questions that speak to the core of STS scholarship. In its various forms, ranging from expert-driven crowdsourced…

  • The meritocratic elitism of Google 

    How Google Works is a fascinating book co-authored by Eric Schmidt in which he details, unsurprisingly, how Google works. In the section I just read, he describes how Google sets out to ensure that they only hire A’s, as detailed in loc 1413: A workforce of great people not only does great work, it attracts…

  • an interview with Christian Smith about the need for sociology to do ontology

  • the political economy of outsourcing

    Thanks to Murray Goulden for this great Guardian essay looking at the rise and fall of Serco, as well as the outsourcing industry more broadly. I hadn’t realised until reading this either that the industry employs a million people or quite how much it has grown in the UK from 2010 onwards. It seems evident that you can’t understand the…

  • life planning as navigational guide rather than existential blueprint

    This idea from Daniel Little really chimes with what I’m arguing in my chapter for the 5th CSO book. Life planning as blueprint is becoming ever less sustainable as the continuity of a subject’s context becomes ever less assured. This disrupts instrumental rationality because contextual assumptions about means become unreliable, while social and cultural change also throws up…

  • Gaming Metrics: Innovation & Surveillance in Academic Misconduct (via @claudiakincaid)

    UC Davis, February 4-5, 2016 The event is open to the public. Please register here. Follow on Twitter at #GamingMetrics. This conference explores a recent evolution of scholarly misconduct connected to the increasing reliance of metrics in the evaluation of individual faculty, departments, and universities.  Misconduct has traditionally been tied to the pressures of “publish or perish”…

  • “You will grow to be something dynamic and impressive; You are patient, you are gallant, you are festive”

    Uh, greasy grimy gopher guts Poolside, O for 1 and don’t forget spoons twice Lukewarm folgers; mold on his moonpie Rooms in his home that dissipate into fruit flies Suicide lane wide load ride looting in the wake of an amicable marooning My duty go from moving in packs to sharing food with a cat…

  • spammers as the avant-garde of digital capitalism 

    From Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet by Finn Brunton pg 197. The thesis of this impressive book is that what we call ‘spam’ is fundamentally a deliberate and disenguous violation of salience: it’s because of the vast array of new instances of salience being opened up, in which we search for and have…

  • the sociology of corporate perks

    The business press has always had a tendency to focus on the perks offered to staff in tech firms. I don’t think they’re manifestations of enlightened, almost non-hierarchical leadership, as some would suggest. But I don’t think they’re trivial either. But don’t take my word for it – here’s Eric Schmidt (and Jonathan Rosenberg) discussing…

  • Cf Papers & Panels: “Internet & Politics: from Local to Global Politics”

    Call for Papers and PanelsInternet and Politics: From Local to Global Politics Section at the ECPR General Conference | 7-10.September.16 | Prague Section Chairs Andrea Calderaro (Cardiff University) Alexandra Segerberg (Stockholm University) Abstract The Section aims to explore Internet and Politics across its multiple dimensions in a global and comparative perspective. While the research area…

  • CFP: Critical Data Studies track at 4S/EASST

    *For more information:*http://bids.berkeley.edu/news/call-proposals-critical-data-studies-track%E2%80%944seasst-conference-bcn-2106-science-technology-other *Submission link*: http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easst/easst_4s2016/panels.php5?PanelID=4041 *Description* Computational methods with large datasets are becoming more common across disciplines in academia (including social sciences) and analytic industries, but the sprawling and ambiguous boundaries of “big data” makes it difficult to research. In this track we investigate the relationship between theories, instruments, methods and practices in data…

  • the tinderization of everyday life

    I love this essay (HT Su Oman) – I recently presented a paper The Challenge of Flourishing Amidst Variety and it was a very different approach to precisely the same questions. Read it in full here. LIVING with a sense of overwhelming choice means exerting an insane amount of emotional energy in making the most banal decisions. What should…

  • Roberto Unger on Flaws in the Human Condition

    I really like this set of ideas, though I dislike the language of ‘flaws’. Much of my work since I was a student has been motivated, at one level, by a desire to incorporate this level of analysis into sociological research.

  • 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…

  • the ultimate Rocky training montage

  • Violent Abandonment: researching the Calais Refugee Camp – @SocioWarwick Seminar Wednesday 20 January

    Violent Abandonment: researching the Calais refugee camp Dr Thom Davies (Sociology, University of Warwick), Dr Arshad Isakjee and Dr Surindar Dhesi (Geography, University of Birmingham) Abstract: Surviving in informal refugee camps is fast becoming the lived reality for thousands of refugees and migrants who are entering Europe. Abandoned and neglected, these spaces have become the de facto solution to…

  • social theorising is more important than social theory

    I really like this idea – see the full post here. I was always quite taken with the method for social ontology which Dave Elder-Vass elaborated for what I think were quite similar reasons. There’s far too much attention paid to theory and far too little attention paid to theorising. Following this, Swedberg suggested that learning to theorise can…