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  • 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…

  • 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

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    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…

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

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