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  • Notes on the Social Life of Theory 1.2

    In the preface to his Sociology of Philosophies, Randall Collins argues that intellectual networks hold the key to understanding ideas and their changes: “if one can understand the principles that determine intellectual networks, one has a causal explanation of ideas and their changes”. His point is to understand the way that a focus on networks, as…

  • The sociology of data science

    All science is becoming data science. Therefore data scientists have a lot of power in this regime [stifles a laugh] It’s a great time to be a data geek. This is an interesting aside made by Bill Howe of Washington University in an early lecture on Coursera’s Introduction to Data Science MOOC. I take this…

  • When writing on the iPad becomes a pleasure rather than a chore

    I’ve started using iWriter for the iPad and I can’t recommend it highly enough. In fact writing this post on my laptop now feels clunky and irritating after having spent the last couple of hours working on my social media book on my iPad. There are obvious limits to the viability of iWriter, particularly if…

  • Self-tracking, social control and cognitive triage: the trials and tribulations of aspiring financiers

    What’s it like to be a junior analyst on Wall Street making $70,000 a year in your early 20s? What sort of people are drawn towards this career path? Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits attempts to answer these questions by tracking a handful of millennial recruits to Wall Street as they navigate…

  • Solving the problem of finding images for blog posts

    I just used the Getty Images plug in for the first and it’s great – absolutely seamless search & embed for hundreds of thousands of high quality images. Unfortunately they can’t be used as featured images (I checked the license) but otherwise they’re completely free for non-commercial use.

  • When marketers are too lazy to disguise their fill in the blanks

    I didn’t realise “sociologicalimagination.org” emphasised the importance of “tutor”. It’s fun to learn stuff: Hi, I was surfing for quality websites which emphasizes the importance of “Tutor” and found “http://sociologicalimagination.org“. I’m writing up this mail just to get a hold of you for appreciating your good work on maintaining an informative & attractive website on…

  • Notes on the Social Life of Theory 1.1

    What is theory? Stefan Collini argues that “‘theory’ is what happens when common starting-points can no longer be taken for granted”. If there’s any truth to this suggestion, it points towards the irrevocably social nature of theory. The inclination to address a question in a theoretical way, the variability with which different parties will approach the same question, point…

  • ‘Governing Money After Bitcoin and the “Sharing Economy’, Bill Maurer (UCI), Mon 8 Sep, 2-4pm

    Global Research Priorities – Global Governance (GRP-GG) Invites you to a Global Governance Lecture ‘Governing Money After Bitcoin and the “Sharing Economy”: Closed Payment Communities and the Public Good’ by Bill Maurer University of California, Irvine Monday 8 September 2014, 2-4pm University of Warwick Everyone is welcome Recent and much-hyped experiments in money and the…

  • Workshop 11-12th November 2014 – ‘Occupying Politics in a Time of Alterity’

    Please see attached a call for papers for the workshop entitled ‘Occupying Politics in a Time of Alterity’ to be held at Manchester University on 11-12th November 2014. It seems that the recent encounter with the language of crisis has imprisoned political discourse and robbed it of its imagination to think and act the politics…

  • Remember when you lost your shit and drove the car into the garden….?

    Remember when you lost your shit and Drove the car into the garden You got out and said I’m sorry To the vines and no one saw it I need my girl I need my girl … Remember when you said I’m sorry To the vines and no one saw it I’ll try to call…

  • Customer experience metrics

    Having just finished The Circle by Dave Eggers, this exchange by text seems oddly sinister:

  • Call for contributions: An Alternative History of Sociology

    This open and web based project aims to contribute to a rethinking of the sociological canon and debates about the past and future of the discipline. Would you like to contribute to An Alternative History of Sociology? There’s more information here about the project and its aims. Though it’s still in an early stage, we’d be interested in…

  • An introduction to blogging and twitter for social researchers

    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 through best practice. You…

  • The Philosophy of Data Science

    I just saw the LSE Impact blog posted this nice summary of the interview series I’m doing for them: Rob Kitchin: “Big data should complement small data, not replace them.” In this first interview, Rob Kitchin elaborates on the specific characteristics of big data, the hype and hubris surrounding its advent, and the distinction between…

  • The five modes of self-tracking

    Deborah Lupton has posted a very useful item on her blog, attached to a forthcoming paper, suggesting five modes of self-tracking: Private self-tracking Pushed self-tracking Communal self-tracking Imposed self-tracking Exploited self-tracking You can read the full post here. The only one I’m not convinced of is ‘exploited self-tracking’. I otherwise really like this typology and it helps…

  • Music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#4)

  • The artistic opportunities afforded by self-tracking technology

    This is wonderful – running drawing. (HT Kirsty Lohman) Another long run completed. Photograph: Running Drawing/Claire Wyckoff

  • Social media @NatCen Learning workshops with me & Dhiraj Murthy

    You can book online here

  • Lots and lots of blogging

    I think I registered my Blogger account in December 2003 (during the Christmas holiday of my first year at university) so it seems I’ll soon have been blogging for 11 years. It seems slightly careless of me not to have preserved my earlier blogs, much like I regret losing pictures I’ve taken or things I’ve…

  • The political socialisation of Barack Obama

    I recently finished Race of a Lifetime, purchased because I confused it with this book that I’d actually intended to buy… it’s a great read in many respects. I love reading politics books like this because of the snippets of insight they can offer into the processes by which politicians are socialised (and socialise themselves) into leadership: As McCain…

  • Notes for a Sociology of Thinking 1.2

    How much time do you spend talking to yourself? If you put the question this way, it often makes people uncomfortable. An alternative phrasing: how much time do you spend engaged in “directed conscious thought”? This is what Tim Wilson et al investigated in a new paper published in Science. It’s exactly the sort of…

  • Social Theory as Optometry

    The notion of philosophical under labouring has been integral to the development of critical realism. It is, as Roy Bhaskar puts it, what critical realist philosophy most characteristically does. The metaphor comes from John Locke but it is deployed in a way that criticises Locke’s philosophical legacy, reframing it in terms of a much more substantive understanding of what under…

  • Call for contributions: An Alternative History of Sociology

    This open and web based project aims to contribute to a rethinking of the sociological canon and debates about the past and future of the discipline. Would you like to contribute to An Alternative History of Sociology? There’s more information here about the project and its aims. Though it’s still in an early stage, we’d be interested in…

  • Gigs I wish I had attended (#1)

  • Music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#3)

    I’d forgotten quite how terrifyingly weird and wonderful this album is:

  • Self-tracking and social control: what would techno-fascism look like?

    Earlier this week I finally bought the Jawbone Up24 after weeks of deliberation. I’d got bored with the Nike Fuel Band, losing interest in the opaque ‘fuel points’ measurement and increasingly finding it to be an unwelcome presence on my wrist. I’d also been ever more aware of how weird my sleep patterns have become in…

  • Rob Kitchin on critical data studies

    An interesting presentation and video from Rob Kitchin. There’s an excellent paper developing these arguments online here. More here.

  • What will neo-neoliberal ideology look like?

    Do you remember compassionate conservatism? It seemed vacuous when promulgated by George Bush pre-9/11 and even more so when David Cameron was going through his ‘hug a husky’ phase pre-crisis. It still seems vacuous now, at the point of its purported resurgence, though much more interestingly so given the broader ideological context within which an increasing number…

  • Call for Contributions – Special Issue on Sexism

    This looks interesting and important: feministkilljoys I am editing a special issue of New Formations on Sexism. Please see the calls for papers below! —————————————————————————————————————- This special issue of New Formations will explore sexism: a problem with a name. Sexism is a term that feminists have used to explain how social inequalities between men and…

  • Self-tracking and data sensibilities

    I recently blogged about the idea of the ‘qualified self’ and why I’m drawn to this phrase. As sometimes happens, I wasn’t being enormously serious when I started writing the post but had argued myself into a new position by the end of it. I like the ‘qualified self’ because it draws attention to the…

  • Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation

    Earlier today I came across this wonderful passage by Frederick Douglass in this book by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco: Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many…

  • Music I find inexplicably conducive to writing (#2)

  • Time is always running out

    I got briefly obsessed last year by the observation that at a rate of one book a week between the ages of 5 and 80, it will only be possible to read 3,900 books in a lifetime. This is a little over one tenth of one percent of all the books currently in print – obviously…

  • Stretching the Sociological Imagination: A Conference in Honour of John Eldridge

    From Matt Dawson at Glasgow: Glasgow University will be hosting a conference in honour of John Eldridge on 16th-17th September. Entitled ‘Stretching the Sociological Imagination’ it will include papers inspired by John’s work in the fields of social theory, work and industry and the media. The event is free to attend. Confirmed speakers include John…

  • The slam poetry of Denice Frohman

    What wonderful work – more information about the poet here:

  • Qualitative self-tracking and the Qualified Self

    The idea of “qualitative self-tracking” is one that I’ve mentioned on my blog before. It’s a term in which I think but it’s also one that I’m aware of being unclear about exactly what I mean by it. Searching google shows a complete absence of material relating to it – returning only three hits for…

  • Bourdieusian Hipsters Explain Foucauldian Memes

    After a couple of years using Buffer to maintain the @soc_imagination twitter feed and occasionally looking through the analytics, I’ve noticed lots of key words that inevitably lead to a click through rate far higher than usual: Consider this post a crude experiment to test whether what I’m coming to think is true actually is. There are…

  • Ever wondered about how Tony Blair interprets his own drift towards right-wing politics?

    He was kind enough to provide an answer in this recent talk: In some cases, this will mean a certain convergence of thinking with the centre-right. Relax. It happens the world over and where it doesn’t – see the polarisation of American politics today – a country is the poorer for it.

  • Cfp: Mini Conference on Digital Sociology

    MINI-CONFERENCE ON DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Eastern Sociological Society New York City February 26-March 1, 2015 Millennium Broadway Hotel In keeping with the Eastern Sociological Society’s theme of “Crossing Borders”, the Digital Sociology Mini-Conference seeks papers that address the many borders crossed – national, disciplinary, theoretical, methodological, epistemological – in digital ways of knowing.…

  • Christian Smith on the Sacred Project of American Sociology

    I’m a big fan of Christian Smith’s work. Largely, though not solely, for this book. But his new one sounds slightly odd. While it appeals to me on the level of the sociology of sociology, it’s hard not to wonder about it given how utterly scathing some of the reviews are. I’ve ordered a review copy…

  • The narrative significance of ‘unreadability’

    I’m increasingly interested in how interiority is represented in culture. I mean this as a general term for depicting inward experience of whatever sort. I’ve been primarily thinking about this in terms of film and tv so far. Partly because I happen to be someone who watches a lot of films. But there’s something interesting about…

  • The materiality of digital technology

    This point made by Liz Stanley and Andrea Salter can’t be stressed enough: Digital communication is however a supremely material medium involving large amounts of hardware, including computers, cell-phones and tablets, requiring software platforms that structure and help shape in very material ways the communications that can be engaged in, and being reliant on electricity…

  • Realist evaluation, mechanisms and theoretical minimalism

    At IACR earlier today I heard two interesting talks about Realist Evaluation. I had previously had a vague idea about what this involved, largely through encountering citations from Pawson in other texts, without ever having really grasped what it was in a concrete sense. Now I have, I’m very interested. All the more so because of…

  • A lovely review of my book!

    I was initially excited when Taylor & Francis suggested that Kristina Gupta, Todd Morrison and I extend the journal special issue that we published on asexuality into an edited collection. However my excitement was rather dashed when I found out the book was going to be £85. While it was still an improvement on the £125 price…

  • The Bullshit Machine

    The digital management guru Umair Haque seems to be having something of a nihilistic turn. At least until you get to the end of this essay, posted on his medium blog, which somewhat undermines the effect of a piece of writing I actually rather liked: I’m bored, in short, of what I’d call a cycle of…

  • Four extremely interesting digital sociology postdoc opportunities at Goldsmiths

    Working with Evelyn Ruppert: Job Title: Postdoctoral Researchers Salary: £36,009 (min) – £40,161 max incl. LW Full time (1.0 FTE) Fixed-Term from 1 November 2014 until 31 October 2017 Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London We are seeking to appoint four experienced postdoctoral researchers to join the Department of Sociology to work on a European Research…

  • Self-tracking, governmentality and social control

    This post on Org Theory, which makes reference to a superb New Yorker article about the Fitbit, nicely captures an ambivalence about self-tracking which I share: In fact, there is a whole Quantified Self movement, complete with conferences and meet-up groups. One obvious take on this is that we’re all becoming perfect neoliberal subjects, rational, entrepreneurial and self-disciplined. For me, though, what is…

  • Notes for a realist theory of social movements 1.1

    These are some notes I’ll be adding to as the project on social movements I’m working on with Tom Brock develops. Initially they’re aiming towards the revision of a paper and chapter we’ve written (as well as the conference paper we’re giving in a few days time) but we also have a much bigger project…

  • Reminder: CFP still queer / a postgraduate and early-career work-in-progress study day

    This looks helpful: still queer / a postgraduate and early-career work-in-progress study day Queer@King’s / King’s College, London / Saturday 13 September 2014 Queer@King’s invites proposals for presentations to be given at a collaborative work-in-progress study day. We hope to foster a supportive environment in which new work and ideas can be discussed among peers,…

  • Notes for a realist (mis)reading of Erving Goffman 1.1

    In this series of posts I’ll be performing a realist (mis)reading of Erving Goffman, a theorist of social life I find fascinating and problematic in equal measure. By (mis)reading, I mean that I intend to read Goffman for my own purposes, focusing on what I can extract from the text which furthers the development of…

  • An introduction to blogging and twitter for social researchers

    I’ve been doing some work this afternoon on my upcoming training course at the National Centre for Social Research and I suddenly realised I hadn’t actually blogged about it yet! It’ll be a hands-on introduction to blogging and twitter for social researchers, intended to have participants up and running by the need of the day with a…

  • The poetics of the gaze in capitalist modernity

    The illusion of the gaze is homologous with the politics of the public sphere just as, strictly speaking, the logic of pop culture carries with it the discourse of the gendered body. Does not the culture of desire invests itself in the fantasy of the image? The eroticization of consumption functions as the conceptual frame for the ideology of…

  • The most ridiculous sentence I’ve ever read

    This means: not renouncing the noetic that transitionally infinitizes its objects, which is what Valery called Spirit; and yet not ignoring all kinds of sublimation processes that have phantasmatic essence that can never be isolated, thus which are, in other words, an imaginative activity coming from the unconscious and from its critique (in both senses of the genitive), that…

  • Turn! Turn! Turn!

    I blogged yesterday about the irritating preponderance of ‘turn’ rhetoric in the humanities and social sciences. I compiled the list of 44 by starting with ‘turns’ that were familiar to me. I then used a google wild card search (“the X turn” + humanities social sciences) to extend the list. I googled for a specific string if I…

  • How to Delete Your Facebook Account

    And avoid my mistake of rejoining only to delete your account once more… interesting that this has been viewed 344,000 times and that this in itself merited a mention on the radio 4 programme I was listening to which made me search for the video.

  • Help: alternatives to geo-blocking to protect sites from bots?

    For the last few weeks the CPU usage for Sociological Imagination’s server had been running at 100%. Having had this experience before, I was assiduously avoiding any unnecessary memory intensive plug ins and keeping everything regularly updated. Given that the site was starting to crash on a regular basis, I investigated further and found near continual traffic…

  • Can we have a ‘turn’ to end all turns?

    In the early 20th century there began a marked reorientation within analytic philosophy, with a concern for language gradually coming to supplant some of philosophy’s more traditional concerns. In fact, it’s not entirely meaningful to describe this as a trend within ‘analytic philosophy’ because this ‘linguistic turn’ was integral to the field formation of analytic philosophy in…

  • Some thoughts on microfoundations and methodological individualism

    The notion of microfoundations emerged from within Marxist theory as a claim that “macro explanations of social phenomena must be supported by an account of the mechanisms at the individual level through which the postulated social processes work” (Little 1991: 196). I first encountered this idea on Daniel Little’s blog Understanding Society and I’ve started…

  • Asexuality Videos from World Pride

  • Asexuality at the WorldPride 2014 Toronto Recap

    Originally posted on The Asexual Librarian: Saturday, June 28th, was the International Asexuality Conference at Toronto’s Ryerson University. It was a big hit! A lot of people turned out for it! AVEN has a photo and video thread as well as a thread for conference feedback. A simple search for “asexuality conference” on YouTube will…

  • The emergence of digital sociology

    I’m really looking forward to Deborah Lupton’s book on Digital Sociology which is due to be released next year. There’s a extract from the introduction on her blog which gives a helpful overview of the pre-history of digital sociology, focusing in particular on the way in which subdisciplinary boundaries had tended to fragment sociological inquiry…

  • Incorporating blogging into an academic CV

    These are the four options I’ve suggested in my chapter on this: Listing blog posts as individual publications under a specific subheading of your publications list e.g. giving ‘blog posts’ the same status as ‘conference presentations’ or ‘book reviews’. This might be most suitable for people who primarily submit guest posts to other websites. Listing…

  • The politics of facebook

    This post by Zeynep Tufekci on her Medium site is the best thing I’ve read yet about the recent facebook controversy. I’m struck by how this kind of power can be seen as no big deal. Large corporations exist to sell us things, and to impose their interests, and I don’t understand why we as the research/academic community…

  • Long drives

    last night I remembered being 17 I met a girl with a taste for the world and whiskey and rites of spring spent every night with cassettes that she liked  in a car that I borrowed a lot. and I could never get her to believe. ‘Cause we tasted a kiss that was sent from…

  • Two upcoming quantified self special issues

    Flagged up by Deborah Lupton on the medical QS mailing list: Sensor Informatics and Quantified Self Deadline: 18 December 2014 Preventing disease through promotion of healthy lifestyle choice is a potentially cost-effective approach to modern healthcare challenges. Choices such as diet, physical activity, sleep, smoking and alcohol, have all been associated with many medical conditions.  The…

  • Adopting a homeless person

    Is my title unfair? Part of me thinks it is but I can’t shake the feeling that this is what HandUp effectively amounts to, even though it probably does have a positive impact on the lives of the adoptees “homeless neighbors in need”. The profiles are crying out for a content analysis – how does one…

  • Cfp “The ‘Spaces and Places’ of Professional Work in the Post-crisis Economy” – RC52 ‘Sociology of Professional Groups’ Interim Conference, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, 19-21 March 2015

    Call for papers Interim Conference ISA – International Sociological Association – RC 52 ‘Professional Groups’ Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy 19-21 March 2015 Session: The ‘Spaces and Places’ of Professional Work in the Post-crisis Economy [Session linked to EU FP7 COST Action IS1202 ‘Dynamics of Virtual Work’] Convenors: Ivana Pais, Università Cattolica del…

  • Sociologies of Everyday Life – Still Time to Submit Your Paper

    I’m submitting something for this and you should to: Sociology A journal of the British Sociological Association Sociologies of Everyday Life Special Issue Call for Papers Deadline for submissions: 31 August 2014 Everyday life sociology is a well-established tradition in the discipline and interest in ways of understanding day-to-day worlds continues to be significant. These engagements…

  • The Sociology of Hard Choices

    It’s been a while since I last saw a TED talk I had any inclination to blog about (so long in fact that I only just found out that TED now have their own WordPress short code) but I really enjoyed this talk by the philosopher Ruth Chang. It uses the notion of ‘hard choices’…

  • Interview about #asexuality for an Italian magazine

    What is asexuality, and what are the social causes of asexuality? Asexuality is usually defined as ‘not experiencing sexual attraction’, though it’s important to recognise that not everyone accepts this definition and some extend it to include a low or fluctuating experience of sexual attraction. This is distinct from celibacy, in the sense that this…

  • Would you like to write for Discover Society?

          Discover Society is a free online magazine featuring articles on social research, policy analysis and commentary. It is supported by Policy Press and endorsed by the British Sociological Association and the Social Policy Association. We publish short (1500 word) research-based articles on a variety of topics. We also publish: ‘Viewpoints’ (on current social issues); ‘Policy Briefings’; ‘On the…

  • Bev Skeggs discusses the contemporary sociological imagination with Les Back

    In this lovely dialogue hosted on the Goldsmiths website, thanks to Dave Beer for flagging it up, Bev Skeggs discusses the contemporary sociological imagination with Les Back. To begin they discuss discomfort and dislocation as an integral aspect of the sociological imagination, engendering an inability to take the familiarity of things for granted, instead prompting a…

  • Maya Angelou’s Letter to Her Younger Self

    This wonderful letter by Maya Angelou was featured on Brainpickings last week. It was a contribution to a 2006 anthology, What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self, in which forty-one famous women wrote letters back in time to their former selves. The anthology itself looks very interesting & Maya Angelou’s letter is wonderful:…

  • Help: different approaches to managing departmental twitter feeds

    I just discovered that the Psychology department at Salford University has an innovate approach to maintaining their department twitter feed. Each week a different person tweets from the department, encompassing all students and staff. This has left me interested in the different approaches that departments can take to managing their twitter feeds. These are the ones…

  • My current research on #asexuality #awp2014

    Originally posted on "Just a friend": Emerging contemporary sex and gender social movements: My presentation on my research at the Asexuality Conference in Toronto:

  • The politics of ‘brand protection’ in #highered

    There’s a valuable analysis by John Holmwood on the Campaign for the Public University site of ‘brand protection’ in UK higher education. It’s a response to this blog post which was subsequently deleted (thankfully there are screenshots): In a recent blog, David Browne, Senior Associate on the Employment Team for SGH Martineau, Legal firm with…

  • The next phase of post-democracy? Political disagreement becoming personal prejudice, or, stop being racist against the Tories

    I listened to a fascinatingly crap podcast while in the gym earlier – Robin Aitken, introduced solely as a ‘Tory supporter’ but last seen complaining about institutional discrimination against conservatives during his career at the BBC, has produced an episode of Analysis on Radio 4 exploring whether anti-conservative sentiment is the last acceptable prejudice. It’s a…

  • The future of scholarly publishing

    Is anyone else getting these e-mails with ever greater frequency? And if so could you point me towards an explanation of what’s driving this? Dear Mark Carrigan, I am Vernon Thompson, the editor of World Journal of Social Science Research (ISSN 2332-5534). I have had an opportunity to read your paper “There’s more to life than sex? Difference…

  • Getting inside people’s frames: reflexivity and cultural sociology

    In recent months I’ve been slowly working through some of Jeffrey Alexander’s work. I’m interested in what cultural sociology has to offer as I begin to try and extend my PhD research on internal conversation & biography into my planned post-doctoral work on the sociology of thinking. However I’ve found Alexander’s work slightly hit and miss, occasionally…

  • Wait, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? The Newbie’s Guide to the MLA Insurgency

    Originally posted on PAN KISSES KAFKA: Yesterday, I came out swinging in favor of a rag-tag band of upstarts–Lee, Sharon, David and Maria (we need to give you guys a name–the Gaggle of Four? The MLA Marauders? Help me?)–who have the gall to think they can be on the ballot of the next Executive Council…

  • Asexuality in the 1970s

    Originally posted on NEXT STEP: CAKE: https://www.dropbox.com/s/siuafzzw3f0rn8v/AsexualityBeforeInternet.pptx A copy of my presentation from the History Panel at the International Asexuality Conference at WorldPride in Toronto – feel free to comment if you would like links to or more info about anything mentioned! ?

  • Asexual History Interest Group

    Originally posted on NEXT STEP: CAKE: Asexual History Interest Group The Asexual History Interest Group is a Google Group (part mailing list, part forum, part document sharing and storage) for anyone interested in: studying asexual history learning about asexual history recording asexual history creating asexual archives and more! If you think you might be interested,…

  • 10 ways to promote your university that don’t involve viral videos

    I don’t like ‘viral videos’. I like many videos that have gone viral. But the notion of producing ‘viral videos’, with a deliberate strategy to engender virality, irritates me – it entrenches commodification of internet culture, often involves trying so hard that it doesn’t work and contributes to the blurring of the boundary between commercial and non-commercial…

  • Professional Social Media: 10 Tips for Twitter

    Originally posted on UCF History: This is the first in a series on social media that university students, professionals, and academics may find useful! Twitter for Professionalization Despite its steady popularity, some professionals still think of Tweeting as a waste of time. If you think of Twitter as just another way for people to post what…

  • Using blogs to publish working papers

    The potential role of blogs in helping disseminate working papers and other grey literature is something that has fascinated me for a long time – I’m curious about all the interesting unpublished work that is sitting in people’s filing cabinets, either to one day be worked up into a formal paper or perhaps doomed to remain…

  • Mike Savage on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century

    Mike Savage has posted a thoughtful essay on the Stratification & Culture Research Network blog reflecting on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. There’s a lot of interest here but the element that really intrigued me was the discussion of Piketty’s methodology and how it relates to current trends within sociology: Methodologically, Piketty is…

  • Critical realism and social informatics

    Well this is an interesting trend. Until PJ Wall told me about it a couple of weeks ago, I was completely unaware that critical realism has provoked such interest within social informatics – in fact I was unaware of this entire field until relatively recently and I’m rather taken with it. Witness this recent special issue…

  • The future of #highered? Zero hours lecturers in “an enterprising and innovative community”

    I’ve included a screen shot below (HT @Andr_Dim) , in case the advert mysteriously vanishes from the internet. What really disgusts me about this is the shamelessness of the mission statement – this is “an exciting time for Edinburgh Napier University” in which they seek to become an “enterprising and innovative community” through expanding their…

  • The regulation of academic social media use

    This is a subject I’ve wanted to research for some time but have struggled to see how. I suspect we are seeing the very early stages of a backlash against the uptake of social media by academics – encompassing both the regulation of its ‘improper’ use and the incentivisation of its ‘proper’ use, with the latter being in practice…

  • Owen Jones – The Establishment And How They Get Away With It

    I still think he should have called the book Toffs but I’m nontheless looking forward to reading it:

  • Where is Bitcoin 2.0 Heading?

    After a conversation at CompSocSci in which I finally grasped how Bitcoin works, I’ve been trying to learn more about it. I watched some of the live stream from the recent CyberSalon devoted to the topic. The videos from the event have now been uploaded and I’m looking forward to watching them in full. The videos are online here.…

  • What sociologists actually do and what social theorists think they should do

    There’s a great post on Daniel Little’s blog which uses a critique of analytical sociology and critical realism to explore a premise which he argues they both share: ontology dictates methodology. As he frames the issue: Both groups have strong (and conflicting) ideas about social ontology, and both think that these ideas are important to the conduct…

  • Call for Papers: Sexual Cultures 2: Academia Meets Activism

    April 8-10 2015 University of Sunderland London Campus, South Quay, London, UK  This conference, co-hosted by the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, and the Onscenity Research Network will take place on April 8-10 2015 at the University of Sunderland London Campus, London, UK Along with two keynote speakers addressing themes of intersectionality…

  • Sex therapists, pathology and asexuality

    This article by a sexual health therapist appeared on an Australian news website a few days ago. It cautions against identification as asexual on the grounds that it precludes ‘further exploration’. We are told that “sexuality is as normal as breathing” and that those deliberating about their possible asexuality should “do some exploring, take your time”…

  • Martin Scorsese and the Art of Silence

    This is wonderful: (via Explore)

  • Cfp – Moments of rupture – deadline for submissions extended

    International conference Moments of rupture: Event and negativity in modern thought October 29 & 30, 2014 Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile **The abstract submission deadline has been extended until July 7, 2014** Keynote speakers: Andreas Kalyvas (The New School, USA) Eduardo Sabrovsky (Universidad Diego Portales, Chile) Rupture is a motif central to modernity. A certain…

  • Who needs Game of Thrones? Introducing the Pugs of Westeros

  • An Alternative History of Sociological Thought

    This idea occurred to me earlier today when I read this great article on Harriet Martineau for a second time. I’d first heard of Martineau through a conversation on twitter, ultimately leading to this proposal by Steve Fuller. The longer I study sociology, the more I learn about these figures, whom for whatever reason did not make it into…

  • Writing and your imagined audience

    Do you imagine an audience when you write? I’ve become aware recently of how rarely I do this. The main reason for this has been the jarring experience of finding myself overly conscious about the particular audience I happen to be writing for in recent projects. I wrote a chapter on asexuality for a handbook…

  • The World Cup in Brazil and the Political Economy of Mega Events

    This fascinating discussion offers a penetrating critique of the politics of the world cup, reflecting on the ‘echoes of dictatorship’ that can be seen in the implementation of such a mega event within a country that has only been a democracy for a few decades. If you wonder what the next stage of post-democracy will…