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  • How to be an academic and deal with stupid & hostile interviewers

  • What is Digital Sociology?

    What is Digital Sociology? I really like that Deborah suggested this title for her lecture tomorrow night because it’s a question which fascinates me. Obviously this is in part a matter of terminological novelty, with ‘digital sociology’ obviously supplementing parallel projects of ‘digital humanities’, ‘digital geography’ and ‘digital anthropology’  in ways that are nonetheless difficult…

  • Tony Lawson: 90%+ of economics taught in Western world is based on mathematical modelling that is useless

  • What will post-democracy look like?

    As anyone who reads my blog regularly might have noticed, I’m a fan of Colin Crouch’s notion of post-democracy. I’ve interviewed him about it a couple of times: once in 2010 and again in 2013. Whereas he’d initially offered the notion to illuminate a potential trajectory, in the sense that we risk becoming post-democratic, we more latterly see a social…

  • Angry Johnny & the Radio (at the blood bank)

    I’ve heard Gaslight Anthem cover this Bon Iver song more than once but have never been able to find a video of it. At last! The cover starts at 3 minutes in and it fits gloriously into Angry Johnny & the Radio. I’ve put the combined lyrics below, with Bon Iver’s in bold. Don’t think twice…

  • W.G. Runciman @SocioWarwick on January 22nd

    The Social Theory Centre at Warwick is pleased to announce two events happening on Thursday 22nd January 2015 with W.G. Runciman (Trinity College, Cambridge; ex-President of the British Academy):Why So Little, Why So Much?: Change in English Society Since the Time of Defoe A workshop with W.G. Runciman based on his recently published book Very Different, But…

  • Two digital sociology events @sociowarwick on January 13th

    What is Digital Sociology? An evening lecture by Deborah Lupton with Mark Carrigan and Emma Uprichard responding. It will take place in S0.21 from 5pm to 7pm. This is in the Social Sciences Building on the University of Warwick campus. It would be helpful if you could register using Eventbrite. Sociological Perspectives on Digital Health: An…

  • In frustration at the wilfull destruction of the @wordpress user interface…

    I’ve given up on using the web interface and have started using software. This is a test post from Blogo. I quite like it but it will take a while to get used to blogging without directly using wordpress.  

  • CfP: Causal Inference and Mechanism-Based Explanation: Friends or Foes?

    Theme: “Causal Inference and Mechanism-Based Explanation: Friends or Foes?” Analytical sociology is a general approach to explaining the social world. It is concerned with phenomena such as social network structures, patterns of segregation, collectively shared and diffused cultural ideas, and common ways of (inter-)acting in a society. The mode of explanation is to specify in…

  • Reframing Media/Cultural Studies in the Age of Global Crisis

    Reframing Media/Cultural Studies in the Age of Global Crisis Univ of Westminster, Communication and Media Research Institute 19-20 June 2015 Call http://www.westminster.ac.uk/camri/events/reframing-mediacultural-studies-in-the-age-of-global-crisis Conference organised by the Communication and Media Research Institute, CAMRI, University of Westminster in association with Fluminense Federal University, Brazil In an age of ongoing global protest, an economy in crisis and systems…

  • Sara Ahmed @SocioWarwick: “Brick Walls: On Racism and Other Hard Histories”

    You are warmly invited to attend the first Warwick Borders, Race, Ethnicity and Migration Network Public Lecture Brick Walls: On Racism and Other Hard Histories Professor Sara Ahmed, Goldsmiths, University of London Wednesday 20th May 5pm-6.30pm Room S0.11, Social Sciences Building, University of Warwick The event will be followed by a drinks reception This is…

  • Call for Papers – International Social Theory Consortium 2015

    INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL THEORY CONSORTIUM 2015 http://socialtheory.org/upcoming-conference.html 14th Annual Conference of the International Social Theory Consortium Cambridge, UK, June 18-19, 2015 RECONSTRUCTING SOCIAL THEORY, HISTORY AND PRACTICE CALL FOR PAPERS With regard to developments in social theory, the past 30 years can be characterized as an Age of Deconstruction. Inspired by post-structuralism, post-modernism, critical theory, and…

  • Two digital sociology events @sociowarwick on Jan 13th

    Along with Sam Martin, I’m organising two digital sociology events on January 13th as part of Deborah Lupton’s visit to the UK. What is Digital Sociology? An evening lecture by Deborah Lupton with me and Emma Uprichard responding. It will take place in S0.21 from 5pm to 7pm. This is in the Social Sciences Building on…

  • “It fucks with your honor and it teases your head”

    Well, I met you at the blood bank We were looking at the bags Wondering if any of the colors Matched any of the names we knew on the tags You said, see look that’s yours Stacked on top with your brother’s See how the resemble one another Even in their plastic little covers And…

  • Two digital sociology events @sociowarwick on Jan 13th

    Along with Sam Martin, I’m organising two digital sociology events on January 13th as part of Deborah Lupton’s visit to the UK. What is Digital Sociology? An evening lecture by Deborah Lupton with me and Emma Uprichard responding. It will take place in S0.21 from 5pm to 7pm. This is in the Social Sciences Building on…

  • Social media and ambient intimacy

    There’s a pervasive tendency to see social media as something detrimental to the quality of human relationships. The precise formulation tends to vary but in practice it amounts to a claim that ‘real’ and ‘meaningful’ (i.e. relationships sustained through face-to-face communication) are being replaced with ‘virtual’ and ‘superficial’ ones (i.e. relationships sustained through digitally mediated…

  • Subtraction stories and social change

    The closest thing I have to an historiographical principle is to always be suspicious of what Charles Taylor calls ‘subtraction stories’. While he uses the concept to refer to congratulatory stories of rational emancipation in which human beings have gradually dispensed with myths and illusions that served to limit them, it can equally be applied to…

  • Music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#10)

  • The most popular posts on my blog in 2014

    Looking for an Evernote alternative? Centrallo might be what you’re looking for Why I am quitting the British Sociological Association (must admit I considered deleting this) The sociology of ‘hipsters’ How not to use twitter as an academic The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality Qualitative self-tracking and the Qualified Self The Muppets explain Phenomenology (via…

  • Music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#9)

  • Zeus vs. Thor

    (via Org Theory, weirdly enough)

  • CfP Risk technologies session at forthcoming Sociology of Risk mid-term

    I’m very tempted to submit something for this – in spite of my continued lack of conference travel funding & the number of international trips I’m already committed to next year. Edit to add: problem solved – I only just noticed that the deadline is today… Relating with the Digital, Relating to the Future: Bringing Risk to Life Session…

  • Symposium for Early Career Theorists (SECT), Ottawa, Canada, June 2014

    The Social Theory Research Cluster invites paper proposals for its first Symposium for Early Career Theorists. SECT is a special one-day group of sessions at the Canadian Sociological Association that spotlights the work of emerging social theorists at a relatively early stage in their careers (PhD Candidates who are ABD status and those who are…

  • The cultural representation of our inner life

  • At the risk of sounding obsessive: Žižek is now releasing new books monthly

    Unlike my previous post, I wasn’t actually looking for this. I just noticed it when browsing the recent philosophy releases on Amazon: August 2014: The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan September 2014: Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj (with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova) October 2014: Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism November 2014: Trouble in…

  • Some thoughts on sociological blogging

    The potential value and dangers of sociological blogging arise because of an environment in which the demands of audit culture incentivise the production of ‘unread’ and ‘unloved’ publications which are too often written to be counted rather than to be read. The risk is that sociological blogging gets drawn into the pernicious logic of these metrics…

  • The value of blogging for part-time PhD students

    One of the more elusive benefits of blogging has been the implications for my professional identity. As a part-time PhD student, without funding but committed to an academic career trajectory (albeit at times waveringly), I found myself engaged in a diverse array of short term roles within the academy. Some of these had clear relevance…

  • Some thoughts on sociological writing

    The denial of what Ben Agger calls ‘authoriality’ in sociological texts helps explain why concerns about the character of sociological writing have figured so prominently in recurrent anxieties about the status and future of the discipline. Its suppression involves a certain kind of self-presentation for sociology, as individual sociologists frame their work in a way…

  • My 25 favourite books (and graphic novels) of 2014

    How We Are – Vincent Deary The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P – Adelie Waldman The Circle – Dave Eggers Locke & Key (vol 1 to vol 5) – Joe Hill The Importance of Disappointment – Ian Craib The Massive (vol 1 to vol 4) – Brian Wood Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt – Chris…

  • Treating ideas with seriousness: @DLittle30 on social media and scholarship

    I recently interviewed Daniel Little, author of Understanding Society, as part of the research feeding into Social Media for Academics. Here are some extracts from an extremely thought provoking conversation:

  • Next Critsex Seminar – Feminist Encounters with Evolutionary Psychology – 30th January 2015

    Critical Sexology Seminar Feminist Encounters with Evolutionary Psychology  Guest-Organized by Rachel O’Neill, King’s College London.    ​Friday 30 January 2015, 2-6pm Room G.80, Franklin-Wilkins Building King’s College London (Waterloo Campus) ​ Prof. Deborah Cameron, University of Oxford: “Evolution, language and the battle of the sexes: A feminist linguist encounters evolutionary psychology” Dr. Celia Roberts, Lancaster University: “Evolution, early puberty and the half-lives of…

  • Sexual Cultures 2: Academia Meets Activism

    Sexuality activists/academics – do consider submitting to this and please pass it on. Due to the huge interest in the Sexual Cultures 2: Academia Meets Activism conference, we have extended the Call for Papers to 15 January 2015.  Please circulate widely and forward to individuals/networks who might be interested. Sexual Cultures 2: Academia Meets Activism April 8-10…

  • Life in the accelerated academy: how it’s possible for Žižek to publish 55 books in 14 years

    I’ve long been a little bit fascinated by Žižek. I find him utterly hypnotic to watch and have consumed countless YouTube lectures by him. I genuinely enjoy his journalistic output and have read a lot of it via the Guardian, London Review of Books and the New Statesman. I find his short books immensely readable and his longer books…

  • What an amazing instrument: the mridangam

    I heard one being played for the first time on Friday and now I’m slightly obsessed. Recordings of it don’t do justice to how mesmeric it is:

  • The gaps in which being human happens

    I’m currently reading Vincent Deary’s How We Are. It’s the first book in a planned trilogy exploring how people change. For the last few months I’ve had a vague idea that at some point I’d like to develop themes from my PhD into a book for a wider audience. My project sought to develop a framework for studying the…

  • There was no ‘I’ to do it, because the ‘I’ was the result

    From How We Are (How to Live Trilogy 1) by Vincent Deary (loc 247) – a beautiful and strange book: Our first memories are of things out there, worldly happenings taking place in a world of circumstance, to this ‘I’ here, to this little self. Our real beginnings are veiled in darkness. Below the coherent order…

  • Call for papers: Causal Inference and Mechanism-Based Explanation: Friends or Foes?

    At some point I’d love to make it to one of the Analytical Sociology conferences: INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF ANALYTICAL SOCIOLOGISTS We are happy to announce the call for papers for the 8th Analytical Sociology Conference – June 12 and 13, 2015 in Cambridge, MA. Theme: “Causal Inference and Mechanism-Based Explanation: Friends or Foes?” Organizers: Mary…

  • Call for papers: Internet of You: Data Big and Small

    This looks really interesting – if I wasn’t drowning under the weight of existing writing commitments, I’d love to try and write something for the final topic suggestion: Call for papers for special issue of IEEE Internet Computing – http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/iccfp6 Internet of You: Data Big and Small Final submissions due:  1 March 2015 Publication issue: …

  • An Agenda for Digital Sociology

    I see Digital Sociology as an open-ended integrative project, concerned to assemble the disparate strands of sociological engagement with digital technology within a more or less shared intellectual space: not in the sense of striving for unanimity but rather to ensure that disagreements at least tend to play out in terms which make the basis…

  • CfP: Feminist Early Career Academics

    This looks good: Please see below and attached a call for papers for an edited book entitled ‘Feminist Beginnings: Being an Early Career Feminist Academic in a Changing Academy’, to be edited by Dr Rachel Thwaites and Dr Amy Godoy-Pressland. Please circulate around your networks. In a fast-changing higher education academy, where marketisation is increasingly…

  • ‘Rank and Yank’ in Higher Education

    From What about Me?: the struggle for identity in a market-based society by Paul Verhaeghe: Enron, an American multinational, introduced this practice at the end of the previous century, dubbing it the ‘Rank and Yank appraisal system’. The individual performances of its staff members were continually monitored and contrasted. On the basis of the results, one-fifth…

  • The Relational Constitution of Collective Agency

    In this paper Tom Brock and I argue that relationality is key to understanding the constitution of social movements: how do individuals ‘fuse’ into a collective? Our focus is on the relational bonds that emerge between participants, consolidated through situated action, in relation to which individuals come to value their reciprocal action towards a shared…

  • The Sociology of Civilizational Collapse

    How do we envisage our future? To ask this question usually invites reflections upon personal biography. More rarely does it address ‘our’ in a civilizational sense – I use the term loosely here to refer to the totality of organised human social life which, in contemporary circumstances I would take to be unitary (in the sense of…

  • Super Mario Hurting People

    \ There’s a whole youtube genre of Mario videos – my generation’s ‘cognitive surplus’?

  • The Blues, Mary

    I learned how to hammer in the burning August sun I learned how to lie and cheat, how to steel and just how to run I fell asleep most nights with somebody else’s blood on my tongue, Your tongue You learned just how to run But it’s just the blues, Mary the blues Swirling around…

  • The temporal horizons of sociology

    I just came across a passage by James Meek in which he describes being drawn to, the obscure realm of events that are too fresh for history, but too old for journalism; the murky gap of popular perception that covers the period from two years ago to about twenty-five years back, in which events are…

  • Saturday 6 December – Para-Academic Handbook Launch in London, UK

    A worthy cause: Saturday 6 December – Para-Academic Handbook Launch in London, UK 6.30pm start at Housman’s Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London N1 9DX £3 entry redeemable against the purchase of any book in-store. ‘Academia is dying, and in the process compulsively crushes the desires for learning, creating, teaching, cooperating it claimed to…

  • Evading the necessity of selection

    In her The Reflexive Imperative, Margaret Archer presents an idea she terms the necessity of selection: the necessity of selecting from the options available to us. These options are always structurally and culturally circumscribed, albeit to wildly varying degrees, however they remain options. The nature of our ‘selections’ vary wildly but they are always a matter of discriminating between…

  • An introduction to blogging and twitter for social researchers

    You can book online here. Given the increasing pressure to demonstrate the impact of social research, it is inevitable that researchers are looking towards the opportunities offered by social media. This one day course offers an accessible introduction to the use of blogging and twitter, encompassing the possibilities they offer for social researchers and walking you…

  • On the Street Where you Live: Bourdieusian analysis of socio-spatial hierarchy

    This looks really interesting: ‘On the Street Where you Live’: Bourdieusian analysis of socio-spatial hierarchy BSA Bourdieu Study Group Event Tuesday 2nd December 2014 London Key Note Speakers:  Dr Paul Watt (Birkbeck) Dr Michaela Benson (Goldsmith) Dr Tracey Jensen (UEL) Dr Simon Harding (Middlesex University) and Stephen Crossley (Durham) The relations between the social world…

  • Technology and Human Nature

    In their Webcam, Daniel Miller and Jolynna Sinanan offer what they describe as a theory of attainment. While I’m not sure they’d accept my terminology, I read this as an attempt to theorise the causal powers of technology in relation to the causal powers of human beings. They start by recognising that “people have relationships with people and they have…

  • CfP: Queering Paradigms

    SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS: Queering Paradigms 6 Deadline extension: New deadline 30 November 2014. After an exciting and highly productive five year journey through four continents, the Queering Paradigms conference will visit its point of origin again in its sixth incarnation. Queering Paradigms 6 is planned to be held in South England 20-25 July 2015.…

  • Social analytics as an agenda for digital sociology

    What Nick Couldry says here is a pleasingly precise statement of what I’ve been trying to articulate when writing vague statements like the “distinctively sociological sensibility which is marginalised by computational social science”: The starting-points for a hermeneutics of the social world are, in key ways, being transformed by big data and by the embedding of algorithmic…

  • The myth of ‘us’ in a digital age

    In his A necessary disenchantment: myth, agency and injustice in a digital world, Nick Couldry argues that transitions in media infrastructure are facilitating the emergence of a new myth of collectivity: A new myth about the collectivities we form when we use platforms such as Facebook. An emerging myth of natural collectivity that is particularly seductive, because…

  • The decoupling of sex and romance

    If we accept this account then we can see the ‘sexual revolution’ as constituting a decoupling of sex from commitment. Can we read the emergence of asexuality as a parallel decoupling of commitment from sex? “The really big change in sexual practices among young Americans occurred with the Baby Boomer generation, that is the move toward premarital…

  • 10 political cliches that make me want to smash my radio

    Hard working families Difficult decisions Grown up discussions Playing politics Real people Real jobs There’s no money left in the kitty Open for business UK PLC Vision

  • The intellectual legitimacy of academic blogging

    One of my favourite academic blogs is Understanding Society. Written by the philosopher Daniel Little, it covers a diverse range of topics across the social sciences while continually coming back to a number of core theoretical questions that fascinate me. Reflecting on its seventh anniversary, Little offers some interesting thoughts on the role that academic blogging plays in his…

  • Nightcrawler: or, the possibility of a vocation in late capitalism

    Lou Bloom is a petty thief, prowling Los Angeles by night while seeking some purpose in his life. He exists on the fringes of society, stealing to survive while also offering himself as an employee prepared to work under any conditions. We see the rejection he must have faced on many occasions, in spite of…

  • Junior Theorist Symposium August 2015, Chicago, IL CFP

    Is American sociology much more openly hierarchical than UK sociology? Or am I just reading too much into the name? Either way, it looks good, even if I dislike the title and concept slightly: SUBMISSION DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 13, 2015 We invite submissions for extended abstracts for the 9th Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS), to be held…

  • Internal conversation in Friends

  • A steampunk fairy tale

    http://www.theatlantic.com/video/iframe/381505/

  • Early Career Researcher Conference: Gender, sexuality and young people

    This looks worthwhile: Early Career Researcher Conference Gender, sexuality and young people: After No Outsiders Date: 9th December, 2014, 10..00am – 16.30pm Venue: University of York, Berrick Saul Building, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD This interdisciplinary conference aims to bring together Early Career Researchers whose work explores issues around gender, sexuality, and young people. It is…

  • “So we’ve built it, but have they come?” eCloud workshop

    I’m going to this, workload permitting: The ESF Research Network for Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities (NeDiMAH), in conjunction with the Europeana Cloud (eCloud) project wishes to invite applications to attend a one-day workshop investigating potential uses for APIs in Humanities and Social Science research. The workshop will take place on Wednesday 17th…

  • The Double Social Life of Methods

    I wrote a few days ago about The Social Life of Methods, an interesting programme of research undertaken by Evelyn Ruppert, Mike Savage and John Law. This is orientated towards what the authors term the ‘methodological complex’: a dominant way of understanding method, tangled up in a particular division of labour, which precludes the investigation…

  • Seven reasons why blogging is academically valuable

    This is a good list by John Danaher. Read it in full here: 1. It helps to build the habit of writing: 2. It helps to generate writing flow states: 3. It helps you to really understand your area of research: 4. It allows you to systematically develop the elements of a research article 5.…

  • Next Tuesday @SocioWarwick: @GrahamScambler on an interdisciplinary approach to the ‘structuring of agency’

    In the third Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Graham Scambler (Emeritus Professor of Medical Sociology at UCL) discusses reflexivity and an interdisciplinary approach to the ‘structuring of agency’: Margaret Archer’s recent contributions to our understanding of reflexivity in late capitalist society provide useful resources for theorizing across the substantive domains of sociology. Using illustrations from my own…

  • The co-option of hacking

    I noticed this in the foyer of Warwick’s sociology department this morning. I’d read about military recruitment of hackers in the US but hadn’t realized how widespread this co-option of hacking had become. I think it’s interesting to see the invocation of ‘hacking’ as part of the institutionalisation of data science in light of this…

  • Actor centred sociology

    In the last couple of years, I’ve occasionally wondered whether I’m a methodological individualist. The term carries intensely negative connotations within the areas of sociology in which I spend my time. I’m certainly not an individualist in an ontological sense: I think the social world is made up of many kinds of entities and that we can…

  • Graham Scambler on an interdisciplinary approach to the ‘structuring of agency’ – November 11th @SocioWarwick

    In the third Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Graham Scambler (Emeritus Professor of Medical Sociology at UCL) discusses reflexivity and an interdisciplinary approach to the ‘structuring of agency’: Margaret Archer’s recent contributions to our understanding of reflexivity in late capitalist society provide useful resources for theorizing across the substantive domains of sociology. Using illustrations from my own…

  • The Social Life of Methods

    The suggestion that research methods have a double social life seems uncontentious to me. The claims being made are that (1) methods are shaped by the social contexts in which they emerge and (2) methods in turn help shape those contexts. So research methods should not be understood as neutral tools developed in isolation from the social world they are orientated…

  • We are experiencing a “pre-” that we can’t name yet

    This is the claim made by Matthew Barzun, US ambassador to the UK, in an intruiging piece for the New Statesman. He attacks the view that the world is sliding into anarchy, offering a counter-narrative that is every bit as sweeping and accentuates the positive: It is a time of levelling. The world has reduced extreme poverty…

  • How to get started on a sociology essay

    Are you clear about what the question is asking? If you’re uncertain about what the terms mean or how they fit together then it’ll be difficult to know how to start writing. Try and clarify issues like these before you start planning the essay. Try getting everything you think about the topic down on paper before…

  • Graham Scambler on an interdisciplinary approach to the ‘structuring of agency’ – November 11th @SocioWarwick

    In the third Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Graham Scambler (Emeritus Professor of Medical Sociology at UCL) discusses reflexivity and an interdisciplinary approach to the ‘structuring of agency’: Margaret Archer’s recent contributions to our understanding of reflexivity in late capitalist society provide useful resources for theorizing across the substantive domains of sociology. Using illustrations from my own…

  • Rom Harré talking @WarwickBSchool on Positioning Theory (CC @SocioWarwick)

    I’m rather frustrating that I can’t make this: We are pleased to announce a visiting lecture by Professor Rom Harré (Distinguished Research Professor in the Psychology Department of Georgetown University and former director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural & Social Science at LSE) that may be of interest to members of your group…

  • Centre for Social Ontology seminars (2014/15) @SocioWarwick

    All welcome! There’s information here about getting to the University of Warwick. Contact socialontology@warwick.ac.uk if you have any questions or want help finding your way to the campus. We’ll be recording the talks subject to the speaker’s permission. November 11th: Graham Scambler (University College London) S0.13 ‘Margaret Archer, reflexivity and an interdisciplinary approach to the…

  • I am trying to be heroic because all around me history sings

    I am trying to be heroic in an age of modernity I am trying to be heroic, because all around me history sings So I enjoyed and I devoured flesh and wine and luxury But in my heart I am lukewarm nothing ever really touches me At Les Trois Garçons We meet at precisely 9…

  • Roy Bhaskar explains critical realism, dialectical critical realism, and metareality in less than 6 minutes

    Via the ICCR blog

  • Call for papers: Critical Realism, Gender and Feminism

    I’m not sure what I’d write but I’d really like to contribute to this: 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 An increasing number of gender scholars have become familiar with critical realism, finding…

  • TOMORROW @SocioWarwick: Emma Uprichard on Complex Temporal Ontologies and Method

    In the second Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Emma Uprichard(Associate Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies) discusses Complex Temporal Ontologies and Method: This paper reflects on the methodological challenge of applying complexity theory to study social systems. More specifically, the focus is on the problem of capturing complex patterns of time and temporality empirically.…

  • Call for papers: gender, language and sexuality

    This looks like a great idea. Despite having decided I don’t want to do asexuality research anymore, I’m rather tempted to have a serious go at setting out my idea about the historical emergence of the sexual assumption in the hope I can get some corpus linguists interested in helping me investigate it: We are…

  • Emma Uprichard on Complex Temporal Ontologies and Method – October 28th @SocioWarwick

    In the second Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Emma Uprichard (Associate Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies) discusses Complex Temporal Ontologies and Method: This paper reflects on the methodological challenge of applying complexity theory to study social systems. More specifically, the focus is on the problem of capturing complex patterns of time and temporality…

  • Time and Reflexivity

    In Margaret Archer’s work on Reflexivity, this faculty is seen as mediating between structure and agency. Our capacity to ‘bend back’ upon ourselves, considering our circumstances in light of our commitments and vice versa, constitutes the point at which structural powers operate upon individual lives. On this view, structures don’t operate automatically, they only exercise…

  • The rituals of gun culture

  • An introduction to blogging and twitter for social researchers

    My course at Nat Cen has been moved to December. You can book online here. Given the increasing pressure to demonstrate the impact of social research, it is inevitable that researchers are looking towards the opportunities offered by social media. This one day course offers an accessible introduction to the use of blogging and twitter, encompassing…

  • Very interesting workshop someone is organising in my department: Everyday Market Lives

    Call for a papers for a Workshop in the Sociology Department at the University of Warwick,  February 13th 2015 Everyday Market Lives Organised by Lynne Pettinger (Sociology, Warwick) and Liz Moor (Media & Communications, Goldsmiths) Deadline for abstracts: 31st October  2014 Capitalist societies routinely ask people to make judgements of value and worth, and to…

  • CfP: special issue on trans* and lesbian communities

    This looks interesting: Call for Papers* *”The Intersections of Trans* and Lesbian Identities, Communities, and Movements” *A Special Issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies* *Genny Beemyn and Mickey Eliason, Guest Editors* *Deadline for proposals: November 1, 2014* The *Journal of Lesbian Studies*, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Taylor and Francis, invites essay submissions…

  • Free online writing and communication workshop for community organisations

    Along with Rochelle Sibley,  I’m doing a free online writing & communication workshop for community organisations as part of the ESRC Social Science Festival. It’s on Friday 14th November in Coventry. Here’s a flyer: ESRC Festival Writing Workshop Flyer Please circulate to anyone you think might be interested!

  • Emma Uprichard on Complex Temporal Ontologies and Method – October 28th @SocioWarwick

    In the second Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Emma Uprichard (Associate Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies) discusses Complex Temporal Ontologies and Method: This paper reflects on the methodological challenge of applying complexity theory to study social systems. More specifically, the focus is on the problem of capturing complex patterns of time and temporality…

  • Towards a sociology of endings

    There’s a particular kind of sociological theorising which I’ve always been drawn to that concerns itself with the identification of epochal shifts in social life. When I was an intellectually frustrated philosophy student, the work of Giddens on Late Modernity and Bauman on Liquid Modernity seemed to hold the promise of intellectual work that addressed something…

  • An existential analytics of speed

    Integral to Harmut Rosa’s Social Acceleration (all references are to this book) is an understanding of cultural responses to acceleration and the role they play in intensifying the acceleration of the pace of life. This is not simply a matter of the valorisation of speed; in fact being satisfied with the identification of such a sentiment would be to restrict…

  • Queerly Theorising Higher Education & Academia: Symposium Registration

    This looks interesting: Queerly Theorising Higher Education & Academia: Interdisciplinary Conversations Half-day International Symposium Monday 8th December 2014, 12 noon – 7:30pm, followed by a drinks reception Room 802, Institute of Education (IOE), 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL This half-day international symposium brings together queer theorisations of higher education and academia that are currently developing…

  • The obsolescence of things

    I love this old Ikea advert. I’m contemplating playing it in my lecture on social change later this week to illustrate the point that Harmut Rosa is making about the acceleration of production and the implications of intensified disposability for our sense of security and continuity. It also shows what I dislike about Rosa’s account: specific groups with…

  • Social Acceleration

    It is a common sentiment that life is getting faster. However is it accurate and, if so, what does it mean? To talk of life, or social life, speeding up necessitates some working definition of ‘social life’ and what it would be for it to accelerate. Unfortunately these notions are more elusive than they may otherwise…

  • Call for contributions: 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 business-driven managerialism and governance modes are commonplace in the contemporary…

  • He came home from the war with a party in his head

    Well, he came home from the war with a party in his head and modified Brougham DeVille and a pair of legs that opened up like butterfly wings and a mad dog that wouldn’t sit still he went and took up with a Salvation Army Band girl who played dirty water on a swordfishtrombone he…

  • There is an undergraduate module on the Sociology of Thinking!

    Fascinating to discover the existence of this at Rutgers – course outline here! Welcome to our class on the Sociology of Thinking! This semester we’ll explore sociology’s contributions to our understanding of the way we think. By focusing on families, organizations, professions, ethnic groups, religious groups, and other “thought communities” rather than on individuals, this course…

  • Digital Sociologist #6: Garry Crawford (@CultSociologist)

    In this series of interviews, I ask Digital Sociologists about their work and the background to it. You can find Garry on Twitter here. See here for the previous interviews in the series. How did digital technology first begin to enter into your research? It seems to have flowed naturally from the broader topic at…

  • Why are some interactions energising while others are not?

    We subsume such a wide array of phenomena under the category of ‘interaction’ that we sometimes risk obscuring the diversity within this category. One important way in which interactions differ is in how energising, or otherwise, they are to the participating actors. Some interactions can be draining and tedious. Others can have a negligible impact upon us. Others still…

  • Internal Conversation in Gone Girl

    I was surprised how much I liked Gone Girl. I liked the film so much I went out and bought the book. I’ve been ever more surprised by how interesting I’ve found the contrast between the two. One interesting difference between the film and the book were the different ways in which Nick’s perceived obnoxiousness…