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  • The causal power of (stupid) algorithms: why I’m leaving HSBC

    I just had my card stopped by HSBC for the second time in a month and the seventh or eighth (I’ve genuinely lost count) time this year. As with previous occurrences, I spend twenty minutes on hold and go through a tedious security check process to confirm that my last ten transactions were indeed my…

  • Guest talk by Margaret Archer at Cardiff University – 2nd Dec. 2014

    Prof. Margaret Archer will give a guest-talk at Cardiff University on an oft-neglected aspect of critical realism. She will address how groups and group relations are transformed in important respects in the course of pursuing and introducing social transformations. Her talk draws empirical illustrations from the contestation of intellectual property in Late Modernity. The event…

  • The ingenuity and persistence of cats

  • Another review of my book!

    The second review of my Asexuality and Sexual Normativity just came out in Psychology & Sexuality. You can read it here, if you have access.  The first review was in the LSE Review of Books a few months ago.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Why we need a sociology of the dark side

  • Coventry: Ghost Town of Post War Capitalism?

    After far too many years living in Coventry, I’ve become slightly fascinated by its modern history. Given how grim the place feels and how disparagingly its regarded in popular culture, it was jarring to discover that the city had once been seen as the ‘Phoenix rising from the ashes’: a great urban hope of the post world…

  • The ‘Bro’ and the ‘Lad’: The Identity and Subculture of Default Man’s sons?

    In a recent New Statesman article, Grayson Perry reflected on what he termed ‘Default Man’ (“white, middle-class, heterosexual men, usually middle-aged”) and the power he wields within our putatively meritocratic social order. Perry makes the important point about how ‘identity’ tends to be seen as something marginal, in contrast to the individualism of Default Man: When…

  • Human/animal cognition and the attribution of causal powers

    Walking home in the rain earlier today, I encountered a very fluffy and very wet cat sitting unhappily outside someone’s front door. Upon getting my attention, the cat insistently tried to lead me towards the front door in the hope that I would open it. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed cats doing this and I…

  • Call for Papers: Feminism, Activism, Education

    This looks interesting: Call for Papers If not now, when? Feminism in contemporary activist, social and educational contexts Political and socio-economic developments in recent years have created new opportunities and new battlegrounds for feminism, with women taking to the streets and demonstrating against the status quo, corruption, sexism, austerity and capitalism. On February 13th2011, demonstrations…

  • An introduction to blogging and twitter for social researchers

    My course at Nat Cen has been moved to December. You can book onlinehere. 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…

  • Digital video production training for anthropologists and sociologists

    I don’t usually post flyers for paid courses (unless I’m giving them) but this looks great and I’m almost certainly going to book a place: Spectacle, an award winning independent television production company specialising in documentary, community-led investigative journalism and participatory media, offers affordable weekend training in *Digital Video Production for Anthropologists and Social Researchers* <http://www.spectacle.co.uk/projects_page.php?id=496>…

  • The Mobile Apps in Research Summit 2014

    On December 4th 2014 The University of Birmingham will be hosting the second Mobile Apps in Research Summit. We are excited to announce that delegate registration is now open. This year’s Summit includes some discussion-based workshop sessions, by popular demand, as well as presentations, panels and networking. Programme Welcome Panel: Supporting apps in research –…

  • The concept of social institution

    In this very useful paper Dave Elder-Vass observes that the concept of ‘social institution’ is almost as diverse as that of ‘social structure’: The concept of social institution is almost as diverse in its referents as the concept of social structure. The Collins Dictionary of Sociology, for example, begins its definition: ‘an established order comprising…

  • Four concepts of social structure

    The concept of ‘social structure’ is central to sociological inquiry yet there is little agreement about what it means. This matters because social explanation hinges on what we take ‘structure’ to be and a lack of ubiquity about the term helps fuel the disagreements and confusions which are already rife within sociological theory. In a…

  • Between interaction and intra-action

    The notion of ‘interaction’ is well understood. Interactions are part of our everyday life. Sometimes these interactions leave us thinking about them afterwards (“what did he mean when he said that?”, “why is she always like that?” etc) and sometimes this leaves us thinking about interaction in a second-order way (“why do I always feel…

  • Complexity and Method in the Social Sciences – Qualitative Complexity?

    I just registered for this superb looking seminar at Warwick on November 9th. There’s a very limited number of places still available. These are the speakers: DR JOHN SMITH (Department of Education and Community Studies, University of Greenwich) Title: Why Qualitative Complexity? DR NOORTJE MARRES (Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London; Director, Centre for the Study…

  • TOMORROW: Daniel Chernilo on The Idea of Philosophical Sociology @SocioWarwick

    In the first Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Daniel Chernilo (Reader in Social and Political Thought at Loughborough University) discusses his work on philosophical sociology. This was the basis for a recent paper in the British Journal of Sociology. In this presentation, I introduce the idea of philosophical sociology as an enquiry into the…

  • The systematic gods have all demolished it

    There’s nothing they would do for you, differently They’re not even listening They don’t even glean what we’re existing in There’s nothing here but love and you Groveling, look what they’re accomplishing The systematic gods have all demolished it But I’ve never felt so brave As when I’m looking at your face They can decimate…

  • 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…

  • The unavoidability of sociological theory

    There’s an important way in which sociological theory is unavoidable. I mean this in the sense in which Alexander describes the problems of action and order as non-optional: “every theory takes some position on both” (Alexander 1987: 12). This is an empirical statement about sociological practice as much as anything else. Against those who dismiss ‘general theory’ as…

  • CfP: Ethics and Education Research

    ETHICS AND EDUCATION RESEARCH  Friday, 30th January 2015 Lecture Theatre J, Lecture Theatre Block, University of Surrey CALL FOR PAPERS This seminar, supported by the British Sociological Association’s Education Study Group, aims to bring together researchers, from all career stages, who are interested in exploring further the ethics of education research. We welcome papers that…

  • Help support contingent faculty in women’s & gender studies

    I received this e-mail a few days ago. It describes an initiative which I hope could be replicated elsewhere. I think there’s two issues here: the provision of support for contingent faculty and the lack of responsiveness of professional associations to the problems facing this expanding group. Such proactive displays of solidarity as detailed here…

  • CFP: On the Politics of Ugliness

    This looks like it could be interesting. It’s also an interesting direction for Ela Przybylo to go in after a selection of valuable contributions to the asexuality studies literature: Anthology — Call for Submissions – On the Politics of Ugliness – deadline 15 January 2015 Ugliness is a pejorative marker for bodies, things, and feelings that fall beyond…

  • 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,…

  • And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

    And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. From Raymond Carver’s A new Path to the Waterfall

  • Your ‘daily dose of Sociological Imagination’: reflections on social media and public sociology

    This essay by Milena Kremakova and myself reflecting on the sociological imagination blog has been reprinted in the Warwick Sociology Journal, having been floating around the internet for a while. It’s a slightly strange beast, equal parts reflective case study and C Wright Mills fanboyism: Mills saw the promise of sociology as being undermined by…

  • Shaking up the social sciences and the acceleration of higher education

    Ahead of the visit by Nicholas Christakis to the UK next month, the Times Higher Education has run an interesting article by Amanda Goodall and Andrew Oswald. I wrote a response to the original article by Christakis that sparked this debate (in fairness he didn’t choose the title) arguing that the problem with this argument is political rather…

  • Daniel Chernilo on The Idea of Philosophical Sociology – October 14th @SocioWarwick

    In the first Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Daniel Chernilo (Reader in Social and Political Thought at Loughborough University) discusses his work on philosophical sociology. This was the basis for a recent paper in the British Journal of Sociology. In this presentation, I introduce the idea of philosophical sociology as an enquiry into the…

  • Resonance and subjectivity on twitter

    In four years of using Twitter regularly, I’ve often found others tweeting things that resonate with me and vice versa. In fact one could plausibly suggest that these experiences play an important role in making continued use of the service appealing. What do I mean by ‘resonate’? I mean knowing where someone is coming from, understanding the…

  • The corporate capture of democracy

    This week’s George Monbiot column in the Guardian is excellent. It paints a vivid picture of the full scale of corporate capture of the democratic process at a time when the Institute of Directors proclaims a “generational struggle” to defend the “principles of the free-market”: The corporate consensus is enforced not only by the lack…

  • Beautiful shining synth songs dreaming of annihilation

    (description in title from this Jacob post) Hey Here it comes again the beautiful warm weather Right before the end of everything forever The end of bars and clubs with lines around the block The crowded dancefloors winding up to feel the drop So meet me by the river, let’s go for a ride With…

  • Call for papers: Turn Studies in Retrospect

    This forthcoming collection seeks to (re)consider the legacy of Turn Studies and plot potential futures for this once exciting subfield of the sociology of knowledge. Predicated upon a rejection of those critics who deemed the original project superfluous, Turn Studies in Retrospect pursues an orthogonal orientation towards these haters, affirming the legitimacy of their core critique but seeking to reclaim…

  • Data Science Fellowship Opportunity

    Program: The Data Incubator is an intensive six-week fellowship that prepares postdocs and PhDs in STEM + social science fields seeking industry careers as data scientists. The program is free for fellows and supported by sponsorships from dozens of employers across multiple industries. In response to the overwhelming interest in our earlier summer and fall…

  • Problem with post scheduling in wordpress 4.0

    Unfortunately it seems the new version of WordPress has an irritating tendency to miss scheduled posts. This won’t be an issue for many blogs but if you schedule a lot of posts in advance then it can be very irritating – I just found that sociologicalimagination.org hasn’t published a new post since Friday despite there…

  • What are research methods for?

    From Paradigm wars: Some thoughts on a personal and public trajectory by Ann Oakley: It is because doctors, teachers, social workers and others are so prone to launch interventions without knowing their effects that social science is obliged to use the best tools at its disposal to scrutinize such activities. Method here is (as Wright…

  • The exciting future of governance

    Background to the video here. I have to admit that I’d assumed this sort of thing was at least a decade away. What’s so creepy about this (beyond “because of this your feeling of safety increased”) is how ‘joined up’ the proposed monitoring is. Rather than piecemeal monitoring that gradually gets joined up in response to instrumental concerns,…

  • Science Gallery Dublin – Lifelogging Lab CALL for Proposals for upcoming exhibition

    This looks interesting: https://opencall.sciencegallery.com/open-call/lifelogging-lab Lifelogging Lab CLOSING DATE: Thursday, October 23, 2014 – 12:00 LIFELOGGING LAB If you could measure everything…would you? Calling all trackers, quantifiers, analysers and creative counters Science Gallery is seeking proposals for its upcoming exhibition LIFELOGGING LAB, which will open in February 2015. Exhibition and laboratory will fuse into an immersive…

  • Daniel Chernilo on The Idea of Philosophical Sociology – October 14th @SocioWarwick

    In the first Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Daniel Chernilo (Reader in Social and Political Thought at Loughborough University) discusses his work on philosophical sociology. This was the basis for a recent paper in the British Journal of Sociology. In this presentation, I introduce the idea of philosophical sociology as an enquiry into the…

  • The Overton Window

    From Owen Jones’s The Establishment, Location 774. According to this biography of George Osborne, which I’m amazed at myself for having read, the window of political acceptability is a key factor in Osborne’s strategic thinking: What the corporate-backed outriders have achieved is this. They have helped shift the goalposts of debate in Britain, making ideas…

  • Some notes on naturalism

    Much of Charles Taylor’s work has, in effect, been variations upon a theme. This was an overriding concern to argue against the understanding of “human life and action” implicit in an influential “family of theories in the sciences of man” as he puts it in the Philosophical Papers volume 2 (all references from this). The common feature of…

  • Why don’t more early career researchers produce podcasts?

    I’ve never understood why more PhD students and Early Career Researchers don’t produce podcasts. I’ve wondered this for a long time and the question came back to me when reading this post on LSE Impact. I think she overstates the case slightly (both in terms of the degree to which social media reproduces existing hierarchies…

  • “I have no idea what to tweet about!”

    Are you a social researcher who feels this way? Here are some ideas which might help: Have you read any interesting papers recently? Link to them and briefly explain why you liked them. Are you going to any conferences soon? Tweet that you’re going and ask if anyone else is. Are there any new stories which connect to…

  • Nathan “Flutebox” Lee and Beardyman @ Google

    (I wonder if Mae is watching this)

  • David Cameron: “I’m hardcore and I know the score, I am disgusted by the poor”

    This is inspired even by Casetteboy’s high standards:

  • Daniel Chernilo on The Idea of Philosophical Sociology – October 14th @SocioWarwick

    In the first Centre for Social Ontology seminar of 2014/15, Daniel Chernilo (Reader in Social and Political Thought at Loughborough University) discusses his work on philosophical sociology. This was the basis for a recent paper in the British Journal of Sociology. In this presentation, I introduce the idea of philosophical sociology as an enquiry into the…

  • Everything that’s wrong with the UK train network in one image

    It shouldn’t be this confusing (or expensive) to make a short journey within the Midlands.

  • 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,…

  • Is Harmut Rosa in a band called Los profesores?

    Or have I completely misunderstood what this is?

  • Harmut Rosa on the logic of acceleration and the good life

    His argument chimes with what I was trying to say here about the iPhone. Rosa argues that the prevailing concept of the good life in contemporary society is one which seeks to maximise our access to variety: where we could go, who we could meet, what we could do and who we could be.

  • Is American higher education as horrible as ‘advice’ posts make it sound?

    I read a lot of higher education blogs. One genre that you encounter from time to time is the ‘tough but fair advice to grad students’ post. This often offers advice on conferences or career planning. It tends to be slightly facetious and adopts a tone of demythologisation. These posts irritate me because they often appear to be…

  • Music to contemplate life to (#1)

    So I have been hanging out down by the train’s depot. No, I don’t ride. I just sit and watch the people there. And they remind me of wind up cars in motion. The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions. And I want to scream out that it all is nonsense. All…

  • If winter ends

    I dreamt of a fever, One that would cure me of this cold, winter set heart. With heat to melt these frozen tears Burned with reasons as to carry on. Into these twisted months I plunge without a light to follow But I swear that I would follow anything Just get me out of here.…

  • Stuff I want to find out

    How do norms emerge ‘online’ and is this different from how they emerge ‘offline’? What does this tell us about the ‘online’/’offline’ distinction? Is “all science becoming data science” and, if so, why is this happening? Is it possible to visualise theory in a manner akin to how we visualise data? Should theory visualisation be a…

  • Reflections on five years spent studying asexuality

    It occurred to me earlier that it’s been five years since I started my research on asexuality. After a year, I wrote this article reflecting on my experiences. When I read it back, I’m struck by how little my thinking has changed since then. I’ve felt for ages that I’m just repeating myself whenever I talk or…

  • Learning to say ‘no’ in #highered

    When I was younger, I used to feel plagued by boredom. It’s only in recent years that I recognised that it was boredom. I was aware of the experience but it had never occurred to me at the time to use that word to describe it. Part of the reason it seems so clear to me in…

  • The internal conversation of James Bond

    Earlier this week I read Solo by William Boyd. The idea of a new James Bond novel wouldn’t have appealed to me if it had been written by anyone other than Boyd and it lived up to my expectations. One curious aspect of it which I wasn’t expecting was the prominence of James Bond’s internal…

  • How not to use twitter as an academic

    I usually tend towards the view that there’s no right or wrong way to use social media. These evaluations only make sense relative to some prior purpose and so I’m sceptical when blog posts pronounce on the right way to use Twitter or parallel claims with other platforms. However I realise there are a few things which I do see as intrinsically negative…

  • 7 ways to use a blog as a research journal

    Recording particularly powerful extracts of texts to which I might wish to refer later. This can serve a practical purpose, constituting a form of reference management which both indexes a source amongst a heterogeneous range of other materials and foregrounds a particular extract of the text. This transforms the status of the archived source and,…

  • I Coulda Been A Contender

    I have no idea why but I woke up with this stuck in my head. Posted here in an attempt to externalise it and get on with my day: I’m broke and I’m hungry, I’m hard up and I’m lonely I’ve been dancing on this killing floor for years And of the few things I…

  • The Para-Academic Handbook: Discussion Event, Saturday 11 October @Hydra Books

    The Para-Academic Handbook: A Toolkit for making-learning-creating-acting was published by HammerOn Press on September 15 2014. To celebrate we are holding a discussion event at Hydra Books, 34 Old Market, Bristol on Saturday 11 October, 3-5pm. This event will extend the conversations in the book, reflecting on the challenges faced by those seeking to research,…

  • What do you actually use Evernote for?

    I’ve written in the past about my dislike for Evernote and near continuous search for an alternative to it. I won’t rehearse my issues with it here but the one that really matters is that I simply can’t stand the interface. I find it hard to pin down precisely what my problem with it is…

  • Music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#8)

  • Social media: a political tool or apathy’s partner in crime?

    Social media: a political tool or apathy’s partner in crime? This is a test post – I just noticed that Pocket now has wordpress integration and I want to see how it works!

  • Crisis and Social Change: Towards Alternative Horizons

    Cambridge Sociology Conference Crisis and Social Change: Towards Alternative Horizons Friday Sep 26 – Saturday Sep 27 2014 Department of Sociology, Free School Lane Hi everyone, You are all hereby invited to attend the Crisis and Social Change conference next week at the Department of Sociology. With 36 presenters from the UK and abroad, two…

  • Why does the iPhone matter to us?

    My initial impressions of Bernard Stiegler were far from positive, largely ensuing from the sheer incomprehensibility of his writing. However this essay by Mark Featherstone (HT Emma Head) has reminded me why I bought Stiegler’s books in the first place after a few people explained the themes he addresses in his work. Featherstone is concerned with Stiegler’s…

  • CfP – special issue on The Quantified Self at Work

    The Quantified Self at Work Special Issue Call for contributions The quantified self movement (QSM) refers to an emerging trend identified by a range of technological devices used for self-tracking.  Examples include Microsoft’s wearable camera, the SenseCam, which provides the possibility to record autobiographical data and is worn on clothes. The Narrative Clip, formerly known…

  • Connecting Epistemologies: Methods and Early Career Researchers in the Connected Communities Programme

    See below for information about an event on research careers, identities and methods- email dave.obrien.1@city.ac.uk to register. More information on the project is here http://earlycareerresearchers.wordpress.com/   Connecting Epistemologies: Methods and Early Career Researchers in the Connected Communities Programme FREE EVENT 28/10/2014 City University London Early Career Researchers (ECRs) face a variety of issues in the…

  • I wouldn’t chide you, out perform, out write, and out rhyme you

    We’re headed to our own damn thing, prepare kid Why you think I’d let you get away with doing radio-friendly versions of what I do? Like I wouldn’t chide you, out perform, out write, and out rhyme you Outsmart, out heart, and out grind you Out shine you with the torch that was given to…

  • The future of social science blogging in the UK

    Earlier this week, NatCen Social Research hosted a meeting between myself, Chris Gilson (USApp), Cristina Costa and Mark Murphy (Social Theory Applied), Donna Peach (PhD Forum) and Kelsey Beninger (NSMNSS) to discuss possible collaborations between social science bloggers in the UK and share experiences about developing and sustaining social science blogs over time. We didn’t do…

  • Gigs I wish I had attended (#2)

  • “MAKE EM PURR” – SAGE FRANCIS

    What a wonderful video to go with this. I’m counting down the days until I see him in London next month:

  • Very interesting looking Quantified Self workshop in November

    We are delighted to invite you to our forthcoming Quantified Self Workshop taking place Thursday 13th November 2014, 1000 – 1700,Somerset House, London.The workshop focuses on the Quantified Self and Digital Quantified Self technologies. We aim to generate discussion about the opportunities these technologies create to improve sustainability. We will cover areas of health, lifestyle, transport, energy and food. Guest…

  • The Politics of Attachment

    ASCA WORKSHOP 2015 POLITICS OF ATTACHMENT 25-27 March 2015 Call for Papers General Theme The ASCA 2015 International Workshop and Conference (25-27 March 2015) calls for a reflection on politics of attachment by engaging with the decolonial, the ecological and genre. The 2015 workshop will consider all three strands as forms of attachment. Attachments align…

  • Is this how the Circle got started….?

    The ApplePay system aims to kickstart the so far slow-moving market for mobile payments, which banks and credit card companies have struggled to get people to adopt, but could also give Apple growing power in the payments industry. “ApplePay will forever change the way all of us buy things,” said Cook. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/09/apple-watch-cupertino-investors

  • Revisiting the Riots – Riots Reframed film screening

    Three years have passed since the ‘riots’ that shook England following the shooting of Mark Duggan at the hands of the Metropolitan police. But as Ferguson burns across the Atlantic following the shooting of Michael Brown and yet another inquiry exposes the  endemic corruption within the Metropolitan Police force here in the UK, it is…

  • An introduction to analytical sociology

    This is an excellent critical introduction to analytical sociology: Analytical Sociology and The Rest of Sociology by Daniel Little  

  • Daniel Little reviews Social Morphogenesis volume 1 and volume 2

    The philosopher Daniel Little has written about volume 1 and volume 2 of the Social Morphogenesis book series on his Understanding Society blog: “Margaret Archer’s contribution to critical realism has been an important part of the recent progress of the field, and her theory of morphogenesis is key to this progress. Her recent volume, Social…

  • The sociology of thinking and cognitive mechanisms

    I listened to an interesting podcast earlier, in which the psychologist Eldar Shafir discusses the ‘tunnelling effect’ produced by scarcity. This is how Oliver Burkeman describes their argument: “Scarcity captures the mind,” explain Mullainathan and Shafir. It promotes tunnel vision, helping us focus on the crisis at hand but making us “less insightful, less forward-thinking, less controlled”.…

  • CfP The Role of Quantified Self for Personal Healthcare @ IEEE BIBM’14, Belfast‏‎

    Call for Papers for ===================================================================== International Workshop on The Role of Quantified Self for the Personal Healthcare (QSPH’14) ===================================================================== November 2014, held in conjunction with IEEE BIBM 2014 in Belfast, UK http://qsph2014.dai-labor.de/ ——————————————————————— MOTIVATION In recent years there has been considerable interest in tracking a variety of health-related data via a growing number of ubiquitous…

  • The role of metaphors in framing Data Science

    This is very interesting. The author argues that “Data carpentry” is “not a single process but a thousand little skills and techniques”. He takes issue with the manner in which other ways of framing this dimension of what data scientists do obscure the craft inherent in it. I think this argument has important implications for the rapid…

  • The modern Data Scientist

    (via @AnalyticsChap)

  • Wellcome Trust Symposium and The Curious Museum of Personal Medical Devices

    Wellcome Trust Symposium on New Conceptual Approaches to Personal Medical Devices 18th-19th September 2014 Post-doctoral Suite, 16 Mill Lane, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Fuelled by the accelerating pace of technological development and a general shift to personalised, patient-led medicine alongside the growing Quantified Self and Big Data movements, the emerging field of personal medical devices…

  • Research ‘Ignite’ CFP – Being Human in a Digital Age

    The event is aimed at early career researchers in the humanities (who may be also working across disciplinary divides such as in the arts and sciences) whose research connects to the theme of ‘being human in a digital age’. Ignite events challenge researchers to make their case in a short, succinct way by giving them…

  • Notes for a Sociology of Thinking 1.4

    In a recent paper Tero Piiroinen argued that the intellectual axis of contemporary sociological theory has shifted from a concern with individualism and holism to what he terms dualism and anti-dualism. I’m not convinced as to the accuracy of this as a claim about the state of the field given the degree of sophistication which can…

  • Music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#7)

  • On Sex-Favourable Asexuality

    This is an interesting article by Talia on asexual agenda. I find this particularly insightful: I often wonder if sex-favourable asexual people are such a minority because their experiences often do not make sense in asexual discourse and so they don’t stay in (or even join) the community because it’s not useful to them. I’ve…

  • What would happen if an evil scientist wiped the memories of everyone within a workplace?

    In a recent paper Tero Piiroinen suggests that “if we all just suddenly lost our memories and other relevant neural dispositions—if no one was able to remember his or her own name, let alone relatives, friends, possessions, occupation, place of residence, and so on—there would be nothing left of social relations and structures”. This is a science fiction scenario…

  • Social Acceleration and Musical Innovation

    I just came across a lovely point in Harmut Rosa’s book about the relationship between social change and musical innovation. Certain forms of music come to be seen as emblematic of the age but, as that age changes so too does the sensibility which is brought to bear upon that music: today certain forms of jazz music that,…

  • Notes on The Social Life of Theory 1.3

    I approached this book with a certain degree of ambivalence, curious as to the hostility one of my favourite sociologists has seemingly provoked in many of its readers. As someone fascinated by the sociology of sociology, it was exciting to hear that Christian Smith had written a book of this sort, even if it sounded incongruously polemical and…

  • Pop Sonnets

    My new favourite Tumblr. Some of these are very good:    

  • Harmut Rosa engages with the work of Margaret Archer

    This is very good – it’s so refreshing to see a critical engagement with Archer’s work of this quality:

  • An introduction to curation tools

    I realised when looking back over old notes that someone asked me to write this for them and then never published it. So here’s a quick post about curation I wrote a couple of years ago:  For all that digital technology offers the academy, it also presents new problems. The instant availability of information from…

  • Music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#6)

    There’s a lot of film soundtracks I like but I can’t think of another one that fit a film this well. There’s a review I wrote of the film here.

  • Help: examples of academics finding, collating and filtering information

    I’m trying to put together the most comprehensive list I can of ways in which academics curate information as part of their usual core duties. However I’m struggling slightly and what I have below doesn’t seem comprehensive: – producing a reading list for an upcoming writing project– produce a reading list for a module or…

  • Struggling to put words to an idea

    This post on things that universities should teach students is a lovely read in its own right. However the final point really stood out to me: That if they haven’t, at some point, found themselves struggling to put words to an idea that they feel strongly about but can’t explain adequately, then they’ve missed an opportunity…

  • Music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#5)

  • Notes for a Sociology of Thinking 1.3

    While reading Randall Collins for my other project, I was suddenly struck by how relevant it is for the sociology of thinking. I must engage with this properly: Do we not have agency? it is a matter of analytical perspective. Agency is in part a term for designating the primitives of sociological explanation, in part…