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  • Call for papers: Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life (deadline TOMORROW!)

    Call for papers: Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life There is little doubt that science and knowledge production are presently undergoing dramatic and multi-layered transformations accompanied by new imperatives reflecting broader socio-economic and technological developments. The unprecedented proliferation of audit cultures preoccupied with digitally mediated measurement and quantification of scholarship and the consolidation of…

  • Conlon Nancarrow

  • Consultancy

    I’m interested in how social media can help us overcome the limitations of conventional academic publishing and contribute towards a more public social science. It seems obvious to me that social media offer us new-found capacities to “throw grains of sand into the well-oiled machinery of resigned complicities” and I’m enthusiastic to explore how this…

  • Using social media to destroy academic jargon

    Thanks to Nick Kaufman for this great example of how social media can be used to overcome the limits imposed by academic jargon. It took me a minute to get the hang of what they’re trying to do with this project but I really like it. It’s produced by the MIT Community Innovators Lab.

  • How to live tweet effectively at academic conferences

    This useful post on the Pickle Jar blog offers some pointers about effective live tweeting. I agree it’s important to remember that most (?) people reading your live tweets won’t be in the room with you and thus will be confused by any features of the context you take for granted in your tweets. In…

  • Cory Doctorow’s Philosophy of Blogging

  • The International Origins of Social and Political Theory

    This looks like it’ll be very interesting: The International Origins of Social and Political Theory What is the relationship between history and theory? Much of the time, theory is held to stand outside history. Theoretical systems are applied to, rather than drawn from, historical events. Structural functionalism in sociology, neorealism and neoliberalism in International Relations,…

  • Non-conventional academic career paths

    Over the next few months, I’m planning a series of podcasts with academics who have pursued non-conventional career paths. This is a remarkably clunky term: what does ‘non-conventional’ mean? The difficulty I’m having defining my terms is precisely why I think it’s so important to explore this topic. In essence, I’m planning to talk to…

  • Is the murky world of internet marketing making me paranoid?

    Is the murky world of internet marketing making me paranoid? Or does anyone else share my scepticism about this e-mail? I’ve edited out the name in case I’m wrong but the enclosed web address & twitter feed has no content on it. Good day Mark! I hope this email finds you well. My name is…

  • How connected is your university to the arms trade?

    How connected is your university to the arms trade? This is a question which I was obsessed with seven years ago when I co-founded the anti-arms trade campaign at Warwick. However it’s largely slipped away as something to concern myself with. Receiving this e-mail from Campaign Against The Arms Trade reminded me of how important…

  • The Potential of Video Essays for Scholarly Communication

    This isn’t academic per se but I can easily imagine how a similar format could be used: The Journal of Academic Videos is obviously leading the way here.

  • Legally navigating academic blogging and social media – next Wednesday

    Desperately trying to move a meeting forward slightly so that I can make this: This month at the Social Scholar seminar we will be joined by Dr Judith Townend who will be looking at social media and legal concerns. For full details check out our Event Page and register your interest to attend. Title: Legally navigating academic blogging…

  • Two UCU member sacked for allegedly leaking information about the V-C to the press

    Well this is worrying: Two members of staff have been sacked by the University of Bolton for allegedly leaking information about the vice-chancellor to the press, the University and College Union has said. Damien Markey, a senior lecturer in visual effects for film and television and secretary of the Bolton branch of the UCU, was…

  • The Responsibilities of Academics

    Do you have people working for you? How do you conceive of the relationship? Are they junior colleagues for whom you provide steering in an otherwise basically collective project? Or are they subordinates for whom you provide direction and oversight as a line manager? How aware are you of their pay and conditions? How aware…

  • The Future’s Not What it Used To Be

  • Data Big and Small: Past, Present and Future

    I’m sad I’ll be missing this (though happy to be in Berlin) – hope lots of other people make it: Warwick University Festival of Social Sciences Data Big and Small: Past, Present and Future This event is jointly hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Warwick Q-Step Centre. 11 May 2015 – 16:00…

  • Who are you to wave your finger?

  • The challenges to creativity in higher education

    The RSA surveyed their fellows in higher education about challenges to creativity within the sector. Though I’d certainly like more information (n=???) the responses they received paint an increasingly familiar picture of how the accelerated academy corrodes the impulse towards creativity of those working within it: Structure: The biggest barriers seemed to be structural, with…

  • Register in the next week if you want to ensure a place – Workshop @SocioWarwick: Investigating the Internal Conversation

    I’m organising this workshop at Warwick in June for anyone using Margaret Archer’s work on reflexivity in empirical research. She’ll be there all day & will discuss the development of this work as well as answering questions about it. There will also be a few speakers (including myself, talking about my PhD, which I so…

  • “so I only stop to tell her that I love her at the red lights”

  • Algorithmic Blacklisting: Big Data & Industrial Conflict

    Earlier today I started reading Blacklisted, an account of the extensive blacklisting in the construction industry that was exposed by an investigation by the Information Commissioner. For those unfamiliar with the case: In 2009, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) exposed details of a large-scale surveillance operation run by a company called The Consulting Association.  This…

  • The Chronopolitics of Academic Conferences

    It’s possible to trace out an awful lot of interest about contemporary higher education from this seemingly peripheral phenomenon: No-shows are a common feature at conferences nowadays, but nearly every panel I went to was missing someone and most of them canceled at the last minute and could not be replaced in time. Several of…

  • Call for Papers: Doing Time in the Sociology of Education

    A great call for papers: Guest Editors: Professor Bob Lingard, University of Queensland & Dr Greg Thompson, Murdoch University Call for Papers: Doing Time in the Sociology of Education The Guides, the Wardens of our faculties, And Stewards of our labour, watchful men And skilful in the usury of time, Sages, who in the prescience…

  • The limitations of academic talk

    This discussion of the intellectual trajectory of Cornel West includes an illuminating reflection upon the limitations of academic talk. It’s a useful counterpoint to my own enthusiasm for improvisation in academic life. There is a time and a place for it but it’s something which will prove profoundly limiting if we don’t regularly move beyond…

  • Thatcher Fucked The Kids

    Whatever happened to childhood? We’re all scared of the kids in our neighborhood; They’re not small, charming and harmless, They’re a violent bunch of bastard little s***s. And anyone who looks younger than me Makes me check for my wallet, my phone and my keys, And I’m tired of being tired out Always being on…

  • Distracted People and Fragile Movements: a relational realist theory of social movement in a digital age

    I’m on the verge of finishing my first article for this project. Once it’s done, I’ll put this on hold until Social Media for Academics is finished. But from the summer onwards, this will be my main project. Here’s the abstract I’ve submitted for  a number of conferences later this year: Distracted People and Fragile…

  • No to outsourcing of academic staff! Public meeting by @warwickucu on Wednesday

    Circulated via e-mail at Warwick but posted here for any Warwick people reading who may have missed the announcement: No to outsourcing of academic staff! Public meeting. Wednesday 22nd April, 5-6.30 PM, H.148 (Humanities Building). Open to all UCU members and non-members, permanent and casualised staff. Join us to find out about Teach Higher, a dangerous…

  • Call for Papers – Scold’s to Trolls; Social and Legal Responses to Visible and Audible Women

    The social ontology of trolling paper I’ve been pondering recently probably wouldn’t work for this but I plan to attend nonetheless: Scold’s to Trolls; Social and Legal Responses to Visible and Audible Women A one-day symposium: September 15th 2015 Organised by the Centre for Law and Society at Lancaster University Law School Keynote Speaker: Professor…

  • CFP – Global Cultures of Contestation

    This looks excellent. I’m tempted to submit a proposal but I did this recently for the social movements symposium in Denmark and I probably couldn’t afford to travel to both: Subject: CFP – Global Cultures of Contestation University of Amsterdam, October 15 & 16, 2015 From the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North…

  • Call for papers: Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life (deadline May 1st!)

    Call for papers: Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life There is little doubt that science and knowledge production are presently undergoing dramatic and multi-layered transformations accompanied by new imperatives reflecting broader socio-economic and technological developments. The unprecedented proliferation of audit cultures preoccupied with digitally mediated measurement and quantification of scholarship and the consolidation of…

  • An introduction to Design Fiction for Sociologists, May 13th at Goldsmiths

    Design fiction is a term first coined by Julian Bleecker and popularized by SF author Bruce Sterling, who describes it as “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.” and that it “attacks the status quo and suggests clear ways in which life might become different.” Design fiction isn’t science fiction, it’s…

  • Call for papers: Centre for Social Ontology PhD/ECR Conference (deadline May 1st!)

    Centre for Social Ontology PhD/ECR Conference June 23rd, University of Warwick, 10am – 4pm Social ontology is integral to the study of society. It is impossible to inquire into the social world without some understanding, at least tacitly, concerning the entities which make up that world and their properties and powers. However social ontology remains…

  • The Avoidance of the Intellectual

    Wonderful quote by Edward Said featured on Corey Robin’s blog: Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do…

  • Sociological questions about the coming era of data-driven privatised policing

    This insightful article paints a worrying picture of the growth of data-driven policing. The technical challenge of “building nuance” into data systems “is far harder than it seems” and has important practical implications for how interventions operate on the basis of digital data. What I hadn’t previously realised was how readily investigators are using social…

  • Why you should @readcube to manage your library of papers

    I know the Zotero connector did something similar but I can’t get over how neatly this works in ReadCube. The pop up bar at the bottom appears whenever you open a PDF on the website of a participating publisher. To do my current literature review, I’m going through this process on my laptop and then…

  • David Cameron Serenaded By Ukulele Player Singing ‘F**k Off Back To Eton’

    Anyone else waiting for a potential Gillian Duffy moment from Cameron?

  • Social Science Funding in the US potentially on the verge of being cut in half

    Well this is profoundly worrying. Even if it doesn’t come to fruition, it risks moving the Overton window in a direction that imperils the social sciences as a whole. What interests me though is the existing grant economy as tragedy of the commons this will further intensify. If the overall supply of funding shrinks, it’s…

  • “all the things I believed with all my heart when I was young are just coasters for beers & clean surfaces for drugs”

  • The Two Tier Future of Employment in UK Higher Education

    Please note the update at the end which I added a few hours after posting this. From discussion of TeachHigher at the last meeting of the University of Warwick’s Board of Graduate Studies: That ‘TeachHigher’ would eventually become the sole method of recruiting temporary academic staff within the University, noting its flexibility to meet both…

  • The Chronopolitics of Academic Civility

    I noticed an unfamiliar precondition placed at the end of this interesting call for papers on Story’s Place In Our Lives: Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this…

  • Biography and/as Experiment Fiction

    This looks really interesting. If I had less on in June, I’d be tempted to submit a paper for this in order to try and develop some of my thoughts on design fiction and sociological writing: Biography and/as Experimental Fiction 5 June 2015 Goldsmiths, University of London Richard Hoggart Building, Room 137 This one-day conference…

  • I like the #CatManifesto

    Produced by Cats Protection in advance of the elections. There’s a summary online here and the full manifesto here.

  • The Drama of Intellectual Life: Performativity in the Study of Idea

    This looks great! Hopefully see some people there: The Drama of Intellectual Life: Performativity in the Study of Ideas http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/25666 Please register online for this event. Conference fee: £30 (full), £10 (students) – includes lunch, tea/coffee Deadline: Monday 25 May 2015 Convenors Patrick Baert (University of Cambridge) Marcus Morgan (University of Cambridge) Papers by: Jeffrey…

  • CfP: Critical Realism, Gender and Feminism

    Call for Papers (http://www.maneyonline.com/pb/assets/raw/PRT/REA_special_issue_gender.pdf) Critical Realism, Gender and Feminism Special Issue of the Journal of Critical Realism (15:5, 2016) Edited by Angela Martínez Dy, Lena Gunnarsson and Michiel van Ingen Email: lena.gunnarsson@oru.se<mailto:lena.gunnarsson@oru.se> An increasing number of gender scholars have become familiar with critical realism, finding it a robust alternative to the poststructuralist perspectives that currently dominate…

  • President of Imperial College London: “Professors are really like small business owners”

    There was a fascinating interview with Alice Gast, President of Imperial College London, on radio 4 this morning in which she gave what I thought was a remarkable and revealing non-answer to a question about Stefan Grimm: Professors are under pressures. They have a lot on their plates. Professors are really like small business owners.…

  • The Surprisingly Rapid Destruction of the Professions

    It’s hard not to see a common thread in these reports I’ve encountered in recent weeks: A third of GPs in the UK plan to retire in the next five years because of high stress levels, unmanageable workloads and too little time with patients, in a move that would exacerbate the existing difficulty of getting…

  • Loner

  • The Writing Routine of Richard Sennett

    An amazing introductory talk by Craig Calhoun (7 minutes in) who was rather affably writing the talk right up until the moment when he stood up to speak. Leaving aside the revelation about how egregiously boojie he and Sennett clearly are, I found his account of Sennett’s writing practice incredibly engaging.

  • The overarching questions which interest me

    Following on from this post: How is higher education changing? What are the consequences of these changes for scholarship? How are academics responding to these changes & what contribution are these responses making to the changes themselves? How are particular areas of activity being changed in the ‘accelerated academy’? How do social entities (people, groups,…

  • Constructing a sociological career in the accelerated academy

    In the last year or two, I’ve been increasingly aware of the limitations of life planning. My own tendency towards planning is something I’ve come to experience as largely pathological. It leads me to impose an artificial fixity on open situations in a way that has often led me to make really bad decisions in…

  • “The problem with capitalism is that it’s not capitalist enough”: Neoliberalism 2.0?

    See below for comments by the Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in this article that are by now rather familiar. This notion can be formulated in many different ways but at root it seeks to redeem ‘free-market capitalism’ by agreeing with leftist critics and disowning the excesses of the last few decades, denouncing them as…

  • Kitten Mittens

    I’d forgotten how much I love It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

  • CfP: The Politics of Data (Science)

    The Politics of Data (Science) This special issue of Discover Society will explore the political implications of ‘big data’ and the systems of expertise emerging around it, including though not limited to Data Science. In doing so it will aim to bridge the gap between the methodological discourse surrounding data science and the political discourse…

  • A new resource for teaching social theory

    Along with Cheryl Brumley, I’ve been producing ‘virtual dayschools’ for the Centre for Social Ontology. They’re intended to provide accessible introductions to difficult topics by mixing up text, image and video. They’re intended as a preliminary to engaging with what is often difficult literature rather than as a replacement for it. The first draft of…

  • An initial attempt to critique co-evolutionary approaches to understanding the socio-technical

    Much like my previous post, I’m cutting this from my chapter because it’s not good enough and doesn’t really progress my overall argument. I’m still keen to develop the point though so any feedback is much appreciated. It helps us move beyond the increasingly influential notion of techno-genesis, in which human beings and technological artefacts…

  • Reflexivity and the Social Production of Distraction

    I just cut this from my chapter for the upcoming CSO book. I don’t think it’s very good but I’m still trying to develop the underlying point so any thoughts are much appreciated: To talk of ‘interruption events’ not be construed as a narrow issue of decreased performance, such that this putative fracturing of focus…

  • The Rise of the Self-Funded Studentship and What It Says About Academia (and Academics)

    I see the ‘self-funded studentship’ as a sign of everything that is wrong with higher education. Take this example I just encountered. It is for a PhD student to work on a fully developed project. I’ve always understood the funding attached to such an arrangement as a quid pro quo: intellectual autonomy is sacrificed in…

  • Theory Stream Plenary at the BSA Annual Conference

    Where I would definitely be at 5pm on Friday if I was in Glasgow: Title: ‘The Challenge of the Rich: Theorizing the Power and Political Economy of Elites and Elite Wealth’ Speakers: Professor Julie Froud (University of Manchester) and Professor Andrew Sayer (Lancaster University) Date and Time: Friday 17 April, 5-6pm Location: Glasgow Caledonian University,…

  • Transformative Practice and Theory: Where We Stand Today

    Interesting conference in Coventry: Registration now open for the MeCCSA PGN Conference 2015, ‘Transformative Practice and Theory: Where We Stand Today’   Department of Media, Coventry University, 2-3 July 2015   Registration is now open at the early bird price of £30 until 30th April. From 1st May the conference fee will be £40. Please…

  • Podcast: Andrew Sayer on Why Things Matter To People

    A few years ago I did an interview with Andrew Sayer about his book Why Things Matter To People. It’s one of my favourite books but the podcast got lost twice amidst transitions from one computer to another, as well as forgotten about for a long period of time midway through my PhD. I’m pleased…

  • Reframing Margaret Archer’s critique of habitus

    One of the most contentious aspects of Margaret Archer’s work on reflexivity has been her critique of Bourdieu’s habitus. I was thinking back to this issue when reading Sam Friedman’s excellent new paper in the Sociological Review on the habitus clivé. It’s a whole dimension to Bourdieu’s work which I was completely unfamiliar with and furthers…

  • Who could object to a project that seeks to stop killer robots?

    Who could object to a project that seeks to stop killer robots? The UK government apparently: The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, an alliance of human rights groups and concerned scientists, is calling for an international prohibition on fully autonomous weapons. Last week Human Rights Watch released a report urging the creation of a new…

  • University tuition fees in England are now, on average, the highest in the world

    Great leaflet produced by CDBU in advance of the elections – needs to be distributed widely! CDBU_Tuition_fees_Infographic Hi Res

  • Workshop: Investigating the Internal Conversation

    I’m organising this workshop at Warwick in June for anyone using Margaret Archer’s work on reflexivity in empirical research. She’ll be there all day & will discuss the development of this work as well as answering questions about it. There will also be a few speakers (including myself, talking about my PhD, which I so…

  • Big Data & Society – Early Career Researcher Forum

    As part of its effort to expand beyond traditional types of academic publication, Big Data & Society has introduced an Early Career Researcher Forum targeted to scholars finishing or having recently completed advanced graduate degrees.  More specifically the ECR forum seeks work by researchers reflecting about some of the challenges of their work (related to…

  • Upper Clapton Dance (cc @Mookron)

    Reading this excellent paper in the Sociological Review reminded me of this video which I’d not seen for ages: The comments on the video would be interesting to analyse in the terms Malcolm James adopts in the paper: Back when Pro Green was a G. Now he’s makin tunes to ensure he gets that energy…

  • Cognitive Triage and Television

    In the last few months I’ve been writing about cognitive triage: the harried state of temporal accounting, attending to what is most urgent at the expense of what is most important, which we enter into when situational demands outstrip our capacities to meet them. I’ve been focusing primarily on working life but I think that…

  • The Strange Transformation of Gideon Osborne

    2003 2007 2010 2012 2015

  • The reality of the ‘rapper sword dance’ does not match the image the phrase conveyed in my mind

  • The place of sociology in the Second Machine Age

    We’ve recently seen an emerging discourse of the ‘second machine age’ considering the potential implications of advances in robots and computational technologies for employment. In a recent London Review of Books essay, John Lanchester offers an insightful overview of this issue: What if that’s where we are, and – to use the shorthand phrase relished…

  • That time we went on a pub crawl with Karl Marx

    I can’t recall encountering any other fragment of writing which brings a historical figure to life for me as vividly as this does: One evening, Edgar Bauer, acquainted with Marx from their Berlin time and then not yet his personal enemy […], had come to town from his hermitage in Highgate for the purpose of…

  • An introduction to Design Fiction for Sociologists, May 13th at Goldsmiths

    Design fiction is a term first coined by Julian Bleecker and popularized by SF author Bruce Sterling, who describes it as “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.” and that it “attacks the status quo and suggests clear ways in which life might become different.” Design fiction isn’t science fiction, it’s…

  • Call for papers: Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life (deadline May 1st! All 5 keynotes now confirmed)

    Call for papers: Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life There is little doubt that science and knowledge production are presently undergoing dramatic and multi-layered transformations accompanied by new imperatives reflecting broader socio-economic and technological developments. The unprecedented proliferation of audit cultures preoccupied with digitally mediated measurement and quantification of scholarship and the consolidation of…

  • Videocast of the Algorithms and Accountability conference (cc @DALupton @SusanJHalford)

    I’m so glad these have been produced. I really wanted to go to this conference but couldn’t bring myself to leave the Digital Sociology mini-conference at ESS15.

  • Things I’ve been reading recently #6

    After five of these posts I’m getting slightly bored with the exercise of describing each book. But I’ll continue with the posts as a whole because blogging a list of the books that I’ve finished does seem to be helping with my prior tendency to so rarely finish a book I’d started. Books: The Utopia…

  • “I’m young enough to be all pissed off but I’m old enough to be jaded”

  • Call for papers: Centre for Social Ontology PhD/ECR Conference

    Centre for Social Ontology PhD/ECR Conference June 23rd, University of Warwick, 10am – 4pm Social ontology is integral to the study of society. It is impossible to inquire into the social world without some understanding, at least tacitly, concerning the entities which make up that world and their properties and powers. However social ontology remains…

  • When shopping is a baffling ordeal

    Pretty much the entirety of my morning yesterday was consumed by trying to purchase new glasses. I already find eye tests a weirdly difficult experience because the analytical voice in my head can’t help but reflect on the naive empirical perception that the exercise is supposed to elicit and the work being done by rather…

  • Dear academic hive mind, please help me identify radical education projects in the UK

    A few years ago I produced a list of all the radical education projects that sprang up in the wake of the government’s agenda for higher education ‘reform’. I didn’t really have a clear definition of ‘radical education projects’ beyond people “trying to explore different, freer and more autonomous ways of learning”. Looking back at…

  • Relational Realism, Collective Reflexivity and Social Movements

    Relational Realism, Collective Reflexivity and Social Movements from Mark Carrigan

  • The pathetic triviality of the discourse on ‘campus censorship’

    I just stumbled across the ‘Free Speech University Rankings’ produced by Spiked Online. As one does, I immediately looked up my own institution. Warwick has been given a ‘red card’ but not, as one might expect, relating to the recent police action on peaceful protesters but rather because the student union has banned The Sun:…

  • The surprisingly vitriolic misogyny of James Bond

    I recently started reading the Ian Fleming novels for the first time. While I expected some unpleasant sentiments in them, I’ve been surprised by quite how vitriolic Bond’s misogyny is: And then there was this pest of a girl. He sighed. Women were for recreation. On a job, they got in the way and fogged…

  • Call for Papers ECREA Symposium Political Agency in the Digital Age

    I’ll definitely be submitting an abstract for this: Reminder: Call for Papers ECREA Symposium Political Agency in the Digital Age: Media, Participation and Democracy ECREA Communication and Democracy Conference 2015 9-10 October 2015, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Deadline for submission is 1 May 2015 Research on media and politics has traditionally tended towards separating the sphere of politics…

  • What would British fascism look like?

    I recently stumbled across this old* Huffington Post article by James Bloodworth, editor of Left Foot Forward, speculating about what a British fascism would look like. I don’t think it’s actually very good but it’s a fascinating question to ponder. And yet, were a far-Right government ever to win power in Britain – and never…

  • “I had it all figured out then it washed away”

    I’ve had this song stuck in my head all day. I didn’t really like it at first but I’ve come to the conclusion that 2:20 onwards is actually quite wonderful in a strange sort of way. Fake Problems are a fantastic live band and I can’t wait to hear this song from the new album…

  • Outline of a relational realist theory of anarchism

    In the last few days I read David Graeber’s new book which begins to develop a novel left-wing critique of bureaucracy. I’d seen Graeber lecture but hadn’t read anything by him previously. His anarchism comes through much more clearly in his book than it did in the lecture I saw him give on the the…

  • The dead zones of the imagination in higher education

    In his recent book on bureaucracy, David Graeber often turns to higher education to furnish examples of the broader tendency he describes. I thought this was a particularly vivid passage worth reproducing: The explosion of paperwork, in turn, is a direct result of the introduction of corporate management techniques, which are always justified as ways…

  • Straight with a twist”: reflections on heterosexuality beyond the heteronormal

    Having been arguing for years that (non-a)sexuality remains weirdly undefined, it’s easy for me to see the interest in the study of heterosexuality. On the other hand, it’s hard not to wince at phrases like “queer heterosexualities”, “straight queer subjectivities” and “queer aspiring straight” even though I entirely see what they’re getting at and it’s…

  • (Re)situating Queer Theory on the Critical Left

    Well this is interesting. Seems like Warwick is becoming a venue for the resurgence of what I had thought was a pretty moribund queer theory: (Re)situating Queer Theory on the Critical Left A Morning Seminar at Warwick University, 10.30am – 1pm, Friday 22 May 2015 Ramphal Building, Room R0.3-4 This seminar aims to explore and…

  • The omnipresent threat of violence under neoliberalism

    An important argument by David Graeber in his new book. I’ve been thinking about this (particularly on university campuses) since events at Warwick last term and I find his analysis deeply persuasive: And indeed, in this most recent phase of total bureaucratization, we’ve seen security cameras, police scooters, issuers of temporary ID cards, and men…

  • Academic entrepreneurship and white privilege

    An interesting story circulated during the week which was widely seen as a particularly egregious instance of white privilege within the academy: On the evening of March 25, the hashtag #CadaanStudies (“cadaan” meaning “white” in Somali) emerged amongst Twitter timelines as a small collective of Somali academics and writers spoke out, 140 characters (or less)…

  • CfP: The Politics of Data (Science)

    The Politics of Data (Science) This special issue of Discover Society will explore the political implications of ‘big data’ and the systems of expertise emerging around it, including though not limited to Data Science. In doing so it will aim to bridge the gap between the methodological discourse surrounding data science and the political discourse…

  • Is it just managers who are heating up the floor to see who can keep hopping the longest?

    I wrote yesterday about how obsessive auditing produces a profession which is incompatible with a normal life. Two interesting comments offered really important insights into this issue: rbotoole April 2, 2015 at 7:57 am Edit “let experts come in and help you” – that’s the motivation, the creation of a massive industry of assessors, advisors…

  • How obsessive auditing produces “a profession which is incompatible with a normal life”

    80% of new teachers in 2005 were still teaching after their first year. In 2015 that has shrunk to just 62%, coupled with record numbers leaving mid career. In the intervening period, we’ve seen successive governments seek to transform schooling in a way that has left the “profession monitored to within an inch of its…

  • CfP: The Politics of Data (Science)

    The Politics of Data (Science) This special issue of Discover Society will explore the political implications of ‘big data’ and the systems of expertise emerging around it, including though not limited to Data Science. In doing so it will aim to bridge the gap between the methodological discourse surrounding data science and the political discourse…

  • IFTTT just raised their game

    I’ve been using IFTTT for ages now to perform various acts of automation between my various social media accounts. It’s an incredibly useful service and the sheer diversity of ‘channels’ supported by it hint at all manner of future uses yet to be divined. Their new ‘Do’ button raises their game even further: allowing one…

  • The drip-by-drip erosion of our liberties in an age of austerity

    Towards the end of her memoir/manifesto, the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas offers an articulate warning about the “drip-by-drip erosion of our liberties”: There is little risk of anyone seizing power, declaring martial law or suspending the constitution in Britain; instead through a hundred lesser acts, the state takes more and more power to itself,…

  • Call for papers: Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life (deadline May 1st! All 5 keynotes now confirmed)

    Call for papers: Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life There is little doubt that science and knowledge production are presently undergoing dramatic and multi-layered transformations accompanied by new imperatives reflecting broader socio-economic and technological developments. The unprecedented proliferation of audit cultures preoccupied with digitally mediated measurement and quantification of scholarship and the consolidation of…

  • Call for papers: Centre for Social Ontology PhD/ECR Conference

    Centre for Social Ontology PhD/ECR Conference June 23rd, University of Warwick, 10am – 4pm Social ontology is integral to the study of society. It is impossible to inquire into the social world without some understanding, at least tacitly, concerning the entities which make up that world and their properties and powers. However social ontology remains…