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  • CfP: Quantified Self Research Network, March 25th

    The next meeting of the Quantified Self Research Network will take place on the 25th March at the University of Warwick from 1pm to 6pm. It’s an informal seminar to present work in progress and is open to all. If you would like to contribute then please send a short abstract and bio to mark@markcarrigan.net by February 1st. We use ‘quantified…

  • CfP: Digital Sociology PhD/ECR Workshop

    Are you a PhD student or Early Career Researcher doing work in digital sociology? The BSA Digital Sociology Group has organised a PhD/ECR Workshop where a limited number of participants can get feedback on their work from peers and established academics in a supportive environment. The event will take place between 11am to 4pm on February 19th at…

  • Print is predictable and impersonal

    Print is predictable and impersonal, conveying information in a mechanical transaction with the reader’s eye. Handwriting, by contrast, resists the eye, reveals its meaning slowly, and is as intimate as skin. – Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being, pg 12

  • Heidegger on Thinking 1.4

    In this lecture Heidegger’s philosophical claims come to be made much more explicitly, leaving me on more comfortable territory than in previous lectures. In order to proceed with the broader project of the series, he turns to the question “what is this anyway – to form an idea, a representation?” (pg 39). In addressing this…

  • Autism and Intense World Syndrome

    This is a very interesting article: CONSIDER WHAT IT MIGHT FEEL like to be a baby in a world of relentless and unpredictable sensation. An overwhelmed infant might, not surprisingly, attempt to escape. Kamila compares it to being sleepless, jetlagged, and hung over, all at once. “If you don’t sleep for a night or two,…

  • 2 Research Fellow positions at the University of Sussex with fieldwork in Greece and India

    Two exciting research fellow positions that have just opened up at the University of Sussex to join the Connectors Study research team on an international, five-year, cross-cultural study on children’s participation in public life funded by the European Research Council. Please feel free to forward this email to your students, colleagues, and anyone else you…

  • Call for Papers -1984: Freedom and Censorship in the Media – Where Are We Now?

    1984: FREEDOM AND CENSORSHIP IN THE MEDIA – WHERE ARE WE NOW? University of Sunderland – London Campus (23rd-24th April 2014) In response to an overwhelming international interest from academics, we have decided to relocate the conference to the University of Sunderland’s London Campus. The conference will now take place on the 23rd and 24th of April 2014. In light the…

  • CfP: Troubling Narratives: Identity Matters

    First Call for Papers ‘Troubling Narratives: Identity Matters’ The Institute for Research in Citizenship and Applied Human Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Thursday 19th and Friday 20th of June 2014. Confirmed keynote speakers for the conference are: Ann Phoenix, University of London Ken Plummer, University of Essex This conference builds on the University of Huddersfield’s long held…

  • Being dragged onto Wikipedia against your will

    A couple of weeks ago I wrote this quick post about Roy Bhaskar’s writing methods. It’s now been incorporated as a source (6) into the ‘criticism’ section of Bhaskar’s wikipedia page. For the first time in ages I feel like the internet has taught me a lesson about how it works.

  • CfP: Sociologies of Everyday Life

    Deadline for submissions: 31 August 2014 We are pleased to invite papers for consideration in the Sociology Editor’s Special Issue in 2015. The theme will be the Sociologies of Everyday Life. 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 are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary,…

  • CfP: Quantified Self Research Network, March 25th @SocioWarwick

    The next meeting of the Quantified Self Research Network will take place on the 25th March at the University of Warwick from 1pm to 6pm. It’s an informal seminar to present work in progress and is open to all. If you would like to contribute then please send a short abstract and bio to mark@markcarrigan.net by February 1st.…

  • CfP: An Invitation to Digital Public Sociology

    What does ‘public sociology’ entail in a world of facebook, twitter, youtube, slideshare, soundcloud, pinterest and wordpress? What affordances and constraints do these tools entail for the task of “taking knowledge back to those from whom it came, making public issues out of private troubles, and thus regenerating sociology’s moral fibre”? What implications do these tools have…

  • Gender, Reflexivity and Friendship

    There’s a great article by Lisa Wade in Salon talking about the ‘hidden crisis’ of white heterosexual American men. They have the fewest friends of any group within American society and, it seems, they wish they had more. What really caught my attention was the description of the qualitative characteristics of the relations they have and those…

  • Unification and Fragmentation

    Brendan Halpin just linked to this on my last post. It’s my new favourite xkcd: Sociology seems to produce a number of co-existing and mutually exclusive (semi) paradigms which continually split and re-form in different combinations. Those who are committed to the idea of the necessity of a ‘theoretical core’ frequently argue that such a…

  • Fragmentation in Sociology

    From a graduate student’s point of view, that’s the hardest thing to face in the field—how fragmented it is. The problem is that there just aren’t that many people. There are only about 15,000 sociologists in North America, I think. It was bad when I was a graduate student twenty-five years ago, it’s much worse…

  • Beatboxing Buskers in Birmingham

    I saw them on the street in Birmingham last night: I liked them a lot. I also like alliteration.

  • Call for Papers on Young People, Precarious Work and Trade Unionism

    Call for Papers on Young people, Precarious Work and Trade Unionism SASE/Chicago 2014 Mini-Conference, July 10-12, 2014 We invite abstracts on the topic of ‘Young People, Precarious Work and Trade Unionism’ for a mini-conference at the 2014 annual meeting of the Society for Advancement of Socio-Economics, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. The transition…

  • The Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies (REPS) PhD Network

    The Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies (REPS) PhD Network, is a vibrant community of PhD student scholars, supported by faculty, who work on research and study in the area of race, ethnicity and post-colonials studies. This network has grown organically over the last five years or so to become a creative and supportive community to…

  • Reading the Fifty Shades phenomenon; free access till March

    You can access this special issue of Sexualities, edited by Ruth A Deller, Sarah Harman, and Bethan Jones, free till March. http://sex.sagepub.com/content/16/8.toc Ruth A Deller, Sarah Harman, and Bethan Jones Introduction to the special issue: Reading the Fifty Shades ‘phenomenon’ Angelika Tsaros Consensual non-consent: Comparing EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey and Pauline Réage’s Story…

  • SIID Postgraduate Conference March 2014 Call for Papers

    The University of Sheffield Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID) 5th Annual Postgraduate Conference Tuesday 25th March 2014 Multidisciplinary Insights into International Development: Reconciling the Divided Priorities of One Global Nation Call for Papers Deadline 24th January 2014 This event aims to provide a friendly academic atmosphere for postgraduate students from all over the UK…

  • Perverse Incentives in Scholarly Publishing

    These luxury journals are supposed to be the epitome of quality, publishing only the best research. Because funding and appointment panels often use place of publication as a proxy for quality of science, appearing in these titles often leads to grants and professorships. But the big journals’ reputations are only partly warranted. While they publish…

  • Bullets and batons in the US and Ukraine

    John Kerry put out a statement concerning the mounting repression of the opposition movement in the Ukraine: The United States expresses its disgust with the decision of Ukrainian authorities to meet the peaceful protest in Kyiv’s Maidan Square with riot police, bulldozers, and batons, rather than with respect for democratic rights and human dignity. This…

  • Finding Common Ground? Research Ethics across the Social Sciences: Conference and Workshops

    FINDING COMMON GROUND? Research Ethics across the Social Sciences: Conference and Workshops The British Library, London NW1 2DB Friday 10th January 2014 This major conference will build on the outcomes of the Academy of Social Sciences’ 2013 series of Ethics Symposia and consider important debates around Principles, Values and Standards. The one-day event is organised…

  • Digital Sociology at #BritSoc14

    Plenary: The Social Life of Digital Methods Deborah Lupton, Evelyn Ruppert, Noortje Marres, Mike Savage and Emma Uprichard Friday 25 April 2014. 13:30-15:00 As an inaugural conference session for the BSA Digital Sociology study group, we propose a round table discussion exploring digital methods and their implications for sociological research. Our theme would follow a…

  • Guest Post: #DigitalSociology down under

    In November, the 2013 annual conference of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) was the first conference in Australia to host streams on digital sociology. It was the Associations’ 50 year anniversary and simultaneously the inauguration of digital sociology down under. After circulating an expression of interest for papers aligned with digital sociology through the Cultural…

  • Conference on Childhood Studies: Values of Childhood and Childhood Studies

    2nd CALL FOR PAPERS Conference on Childhood Studies Values of Childhood and Childhood Studies May, 7–9th, 2014 Oulu, Finland NB The deadline for the submission of proposals is 31 December 2013. Applicants will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of proposals in February 2014. The Finnish Society for Childhood Studies invites submissions for an…

  • Final Reminder: Tomorrow (Tues 10 Dec), ‘Porn Roundtable’, Manchester Uni

    ‘Queer Now and Then’ Seminar Series, University of Manchester  The third and final event in the ‘Queer Now and Then’ seminar series (overseen by Professor Laura Doan) will be held tomorrow, Tuesday 10 December, at the University of Manchester: Tuesday 10 December 2013 ‘Porn: A Roundtable’ with Hal Gladfelder, David Matthews and Kaye Mitchell  5pm-7pm, Room A101, Samuel…

  • 1,000 months in which you can read 4,000 books

    If you read one book a week, starting at the age of 5, and live to be 80, you will have read a grand total of 3,900 books, a little over one-tenth of 1 percent of the books currently in print. #Keeponreading http://cigsleeds.tumblr.com/post/65367567661/if-you-read-one-book-a-week-starting-at-the-age As a shake-up, the philosopher AC Grayling is fond of reminding people…

  • Help needed: the institutional recognition of #asexuality

              The screenshot below is from an ‘Easy Read document’ attached to “The Government’s plan for dealing with hate crime” in the UK. I’m looking for other examples of asexuality being institutionally recognised. Preferably ones with a source I can cite but I’d also be interested in any anecdotal evidence of growing…

  • The Sociology of Awkwardness

    What is awkwardness? It’s something we recognise. It’s something which is everywhere. Yet when we do think about it, it’s often seen as something trivial and mundane, representing an interruption of decorum or a warp in the texture of micro-social interaction. It’s something that can be intensely felt but is soon forgotten and, where it…

  • CfP: Social and Political Critique in the Age of Austerity

    Social and Political Critique in the Age of Austerity A one day workshop at Keele University 10.30am-6pm, Wednesday 12th February, 2014 This one day workshop is devoted to the discussion of critical politics in the contemporary age of austerity.  Following the 2007 global economic crash, which led to a raft of government bank bail outs…

  • CfP: Digital Sociology PhD/ECR Workshop

    Are you a PhD student or Early Career Researcher doing work in digital sociology? The BSA Digital Sociology Group has organised a PhD/ECR Workshop where a limited number of participants can get feedback on their work from peers and established academics in a supportive environment. The event will take place between 11am to 4pm on February 19th at…

  • Boris Johnson and the End of History

    This article by Danny Dorling hits the nail on the head: The establishment usually does not question what they see as their inherent superiority. If they do they are said to be having a dog-day, to be out of sorts. When they are functioning normally they do not worry about what Boris called ‘shaking the…

  • Enhancing the learner experience in HE

    The latest edition of the journal Enhancing the Learner Experience in Higher Education (ELEHE) is out . So now we are looking for papers for the next or following issues. Personally, it was be interesting to see a greater number of papers around how public engagement has a positive experience on learner’s experience (or possibly…

  • CfP: An Invitation to Digital Public Sociology

    What does ‘public sociology’ entail in a world of facebook, twitter, youtube, slideshare, soundcloud, pinterest and wordpress? What affordances and constraints do these tools entail for the task of “taking knowledge back to those from whom it came, making public issues out of private troubles, and thus regenerating sociology’s moral fibre”? What implications do these tools have…

  • Nikolas Rose: What is Mental Illness Today? Five Hard Questions

    Professor Rose is one of our leading contemporary social scientists. Currently he is Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine at King’s College, London. In the talk, Professor Rose characterises the ‘territory’ of mental illness today by posing five hard questions that seem to represent genuine empirical, conceptual,…

  • Collisions, Coalitions and Riotous Subjects: Reflections, Repercussions and Reverberations

    I’ll add this special issue of Sociological Research Online to my collection Sociological Imagination and UK Riots. Collisions, Coalitions and Riotous Subjects: Reflections, Repercussions and Reverberations – an Introduction by Kim Allen, Sumi Hollingworth, Ayo Mansaray and Yvette Taylor http://www.socresonline.org.uk/18/4/1.html Reflections on a ‘Depressing Inevitability’ by Marisa Silvestri http://www.socresonline.org.uk/18/4/2.html Collisions, Coalitions and Riotous Subjects: The…

  • The academic ethics of strikebreaking

    This insightful reflection on academic strikebreaking captures something very important about the contemporary politics of higher education: The disavowal at work here is stunning in its mundanity, the fact that it went unremarked as it was stated. ‘The union should adopt different tactics – but I will not join the union’; ‘I support the strike…

  • Launch of ‘SexGen Northern Network’

    Dear Colleagues, We are delighted to announce the launch of the ‘sexgen Northern Network’. ‘sexgen’ is a collaborative interdisciplinary network bringing together gender and sexuality based research centres around the North of England. We aim to bring academic research, writing and thinking on gender and sexuality into conversation with the ideas, cultural expressions and knowledges…

  • There are no Digital Humanities

    While ideas of this kind appear just that little bit too neat and symmetrical to be entirely convincing, this so-called ‘scientific turn’ in the humanities has been attributed by some to a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis regarded as having been brought about, if not by the lack of credibility of the humanities’…

  • Heidegger on Thinking 1.3

    In the previous post I asked “what is one-track thinking”. Fortunately, Heidegger is kind enough to offer an answer (of sorts) in the next lecture. One-track thinking is grounded in one-sidedness. The sciences, claim Heidegger, “have infinitely more knowledge than thinking does” but they are nonetheless one-sided. The “sciences qua sciences” have no access to…

  • Anti-Manifesto

    Dance and laugh and play. Ignore the message we convey. It seems we’re only here to entertain. A rebellion cut-to-fit. I refuse to be the soundtrack to it. While we entertain we’re still knee-deep in shit. There’s something wrong inside. We’ve played it safe, enjoyed the ride. You won’t like this but I’ve something to…

  • The State Lottery

    Does it seem strange to you? The confetti, the balloons, the mile-wide grins? The victory dance to welcome in the heir to a state of disrepair? ‘Cause it sure seems strange to me. They’re acting like they won the lottery. But shouldn’t they feel terror at the task that lies ahead? To feed and house…

  • BSA Early Career Theorists Symposium – Call for Abstracts

    SA: Early Career Theorists’ Symposium 6th June, 2014, held at the London School of Economics Call for Abstracts The Early Career Theorists’ Symposium is a special one-day symposium for up-and-coming theorists, organized on behalf of the British Sociological Association’s Theory Study Group. This symposium aims to bring together sociologists at a relatively early stage in their career…

  • Heidegger on Thinking 1.2

    Again I find myself somewhat repelled, though perhaps with less justification than in the previous lecture. The second lecture opens with the pronouncement that “we modern men presumably have not the slightest notion how thoughtfully the Greeks experienced their lofty poetry, their works of art – no, not experienced, but let them stand there in…

  • Heidegger on Thinking 1.1

    Following on from this enormously thought-provoking paper by Richard Swedberg on the sociology of thinking, I’ve decided to return to Heidegger for the first time since I was a philosophy student. I really struggled with Heidegger and ultimately justified giving up conditional on the promise that I would one day learn German and read the…

  • Discover Society Issue 3: Wealth

    Please circulate on local lists DISCOVER SOCIETY Measured-Factual-Critical http://discoversociety.org ISSUE Three: December 2013 Special Issue on Wealth     Focus:   John Hills The Distribution of Wealth: What We Think and How It Is     Articles:                           Caroline Knowles Millionaires Welcome: UK Migration and London Neighbourhoods John Urry The Rich-Class and Offshore Worlds Beverley Searle…

  • The Self-Talk of Intellectuals

    With regard to self-concept, my claim in the Rorty book is certainly not that, as sociologists of ideas, we should somehow let intellectuals tell their own stories. As I’ve noted above, the accounts intellectuals give of their own lives are often highly problematic from the standpoint of sociological realism. That does not mean, however, that…

  • What is ‘new’ about the new sociology of ideas?

    Charles Camic : “New” is, of course, a relative not an absolute term. For, if we take the agenda that we’ve associated with the “new sociology of ideas” and, from this vantage point, we then reconsider various other lines of work in and out of sociology, it is certainly true that some of this work does…

  • Asexuality Studies special issue editorial

    In the last decade, a growing number of individuals, self-identifying as asexual, have come together to form asexual communities. According to the largest asexual community, an asexual individual may be defined as a person ‘who does not experience sexual attraction’ (http://www.asexuality.org/home/overview.html). However, the straightforward nature of this definition masks the considerable heterogeneity, captured by a…

  • Realism, Reflexivity, Conflation, and Individualism

    The New Individualism: The Emotional Costs of Globalization. Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert. Revised Edition. London: Routledge, 2009. 248pp. 10 0415560705 paperback, £20.99.  Originally published in 2006, this revised edition is updated to respond to critics and to review its thesis in light of the financial crisis. In essence though, that thesis remains unchanged. As…

  • “How do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t tried it?”
: Asexual Agency and the Sexual Assumption

    In this chapter I critically engage with existing work on asexuality and develop an account of the ethical, theoretical and methodological issues inherent in asexuality research. I utilise the work of the social theorist Margaret Archer to explicitly articulate a theoretical model within which the experience of asexual individuals can be understood. I draw upon…

  • “How do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t tried it?”
: Asexual Agency and the Sexual Assumption

    In this chapter I critically engage with existing work on asexuality and develop an account of the ethical, theoretical and methodological issues inherent in asexuality research. I utilise the work of the social theorist Margaret Archer to explicitly articulate a theoretical model within which the experience of asexual individuals can be understood. I draw upon…

  • Asexuality and its implications for sexuality studies

    In recent years a growing research literature has addressed Asexuality, commonly defined as ‘not experiencing sexual attraction’, with a diverse range of contributions being made from a variety of fields. This article is intended as an accessible review of the topic, framed in terms of the core questions which have been addressed within the field…

  • There’s more to life than sex? Difference and commonality within the asexual community

    Asexuality is becoming ever more widely known and yet it has received relatively little attention from within sociology. Research in the area poses particular challenges because of the relatively recent emergence of the asexual community, as well as the expanding array of terms and concepts through which asexuals articulate their differences and affirm their commonalities.…

  • Uncomfortable positions in local government: negotiating cohesion, inequality and change – Hannah Jones – Seminar tomorrow

    The next Sociology Department Research Seminar will be delivered by our very own Hannah Jones in the Gillian Rose Room from 5:00-6:30 this Wednesday (4 December). We look forward to seeing you there and further details about the talk are pasted below. Hannah’s talk will be followed by a drinks reception in the foyer of the Ramphal Building- all…

  • The sociology of the quiet zone: norms and public transport

    An interesting story went viral in the last couple of days which has left me thinking about the issue of normativity for the first time in a while. I have no way to know the accuracy of the reports but that’s irrelevant. If it turns out not to have happened in this way then this account can…

  • Intersex: Medical, Cultural & Historical Contexts Symposium Dec. 5-6, 2013

    Intersex: Medical, Cultural and Historical Contexts December 5 & 6, 2013 James J. Leos Symposium in LGBT Studies University of Arizona This two-day symposium explores intersex issues-the condition of having “ambiguous genitalia,” once known as hermaphroditism, now referred to (somewhat controversially) as “disorders of sex development.” It will offer interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from the medical humanities, medicine, anthropology, and…

  • Racial Pornographics: A Special Issue of Porn Studies

    Racial Pornographics: A Special Issue of Porn Studies Edited by Mireille Miller-Young, PhD Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, UC Santa Barbara Contact: mmilleryoung@femst.ucsb.edu This special issue of Porn Studies will promote a discussion about race in the study of pornography. Race remains an underdeveloped area of research in porn studies, and employing racial analytics to the…

  • Notes for a Sociology of Thinking 1.1

    Richard Swedberg begins his paper Thinking and Sociology by recognising that there may be “good reasons” why these two things are rarely discussed together. Though “all of us think” and “we all know the intensely private character of our thoughts”, these thoughts are fleeting and ephemeral when considered next to things that we say and things that we know.…

  • ‘Patent Trolls’, Intellectual Property and Technological Innovation

    Over the summer the BBC website had an interesting feature looking at the ‘patent trolls’ who proactively buy patents with the sole intention of suing people for their infringement. The introduction of these ‘non-practicing entities’ into the patent system is something novel, with an influx of ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘finance people’ having transformed the system into…

  • Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETD) 2014: 23 to 25 July 2014, Leicester, UK.

    ETD2014 – the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations’ (NDLTD) 17th annual symposium – takes place at the University of Leicester, UK from 23 to 25 July 2014. We are now inviting proposals for papers and posters. The deadline for proposals is Friday, 31 January 2014. We will contact you on or around Monday,…

  • “Only marxists and conmen want to cap energy prices!”

    The government has denied reports it is seeking a commitment from energy firms to hold their prices down until 2015. The companies told BBC News ministers were putting pressure on them to commit to a price freeze. But Treasury sources say this is not part of their plan – and they were looking instead at…

  • Cognitive Micro-Foundations for Theories of Social Change

    One of the core questions addressed by my PhD has been what I’ve termed ‘the biographical dimensions of social change’ and the methodological implications of how personhood is conceptualised for how these theories are deployed in practice. I’ve argued that one of the (many) problems with the ‘individualization’ and ‘detraditionalization’ literature is that in the…

  • CfP: An Invitation to Digital Public Sociology

    What does ‘public sociology’ entail in a world of facebook, twitter, youtube, slideshare, soundcloud, pinterest and wordpress? What affordances and constraints do these tools entail for the task of “taking knowledge back to those from whom it came, making public issues out of private troubles, and thus regenerating sociology’s moral fibre”? What implications do these tools have…

  • Causal Agency and Cognitive Micro-Foundations

    One final Roy Bhaskar snippet from the Formation of Critical Realism (Pg 64). This is a quote from Bhaskar about one thing that prompted a thought by me about a very different thing: In experimental activity it is our role as causal agents that is vital, not our role as thinkers, and that immediately gets…

  • The Realist Critique of Materialism

    Just invoking materialism without specifying exactly what the sense is does not get you very far. It is often claimed that ideas and ideology have a material existence ultimately rooted in physical matter. But what is physical matter? If you go down one level of the stratification of nature you come to atoms that are…

  • Videocast: Getting started as a Research Blogger

  • LAST CHANCE – BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2014

    LAST CHANCE – BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2014 The nomination deadline for the 2014 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize is fast approaching. Nominations must be received in the BSA office by Friday, 6 December 2013. The prize will be awarded to the best first and sole authored book within the discipline of Sociology published between: 1…

  • Asexuality and Its Implications for Sexuality Studies

    This is a pre-print of a paper published in Psychology of Sexualities Review, Vol. 4, No. 1, Autumn 2013. A copy of the final article can be obtained here.  While asexuality is usually defined as ‘not experiencing sexual attraction’ amongst those who self-identify as asexual , the question ‘what is asexuality?’ immediately becomes more complex when…

  • CfP: Social and Political Critique in the Age of Austerity

    Social and Political Critique in the Age of Austerity A one day workshop at Keele University 10.30am-6pm, Wednesday 12th February, 2014 This one day workshop is devoted to the discussion of critical politics in the contemporary age of austerity.  Following the 2007 global economic crash, which led to a raft of government bank bail outs…

  • Continuous Publishing and Being an Open-Source Academic

    One of my favourite academic blogs is Understanding Society. Written by Daniel Little, Chancellor for the University of Michigan-Dearborn, it covers an extraordinarily broad range of theoretical topics and sustains the rigour of serious academic writing while nonetheless being written in a relatively accessible way. I think it’s the best theory blog on the internet (by…

  • Education, Emotions and the Future Seminar

    The study of emotions within the field of education has been a growing area of study, which has highlighted how emotions are central to student’s learning and educational experiences both positive and negative and to the practice of education itself by teachers (Zymbylas 2007). Where education is often positioned as a rational and logical practice…

  • BISR Postgraduate Conference – Inside/Outside/In-Between: Perspectives on Space, Power and Subjectivities – 9th-11th May 2014

    Birkbeck Institute for Social Research  BISR Postgraduate Conference: Inside/Outside/In-Between: Perspectives on Space, Power and Subjectivities – CALL FOR PAPERS Friday 9th – Sunday 11th May 2014  Birkbeck, University of London Organisers Nelly Ali (Department of Geography, Environment and Development) Mayur Suresh (School of Law) Ceren Yalcin (Department of Psychosocial Studies) Confirmed Keynotes: Veena Das and Gail Lewis Overview Where are you? What…

  • Working with Paradata, Marginalia and Fieldnotes

    Free One Day Conference at Leicester Postgraduate Travel Bursaries available – please email hso1@le.ac.uk Working with Paradata, Marginalia and Fieldnotes: The Centrality of By-Products of Social Research College Court Conference Centre University of Leicester January 14th 2014 http://store.ioe.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&deptid=112&catid=42&prodid=242 Paradata, marginalia, fieldnotes and letters are all by-products of the process of social research which can add considerable…

  • If communications offices want to promote particular departments they should make videos like this

    I really like this style of video. I think these in depth profiles of the intellectual biographies of specific academics could be really effective from a marketing perspective, particularly when it comes to recruiting grad students. Orgtheorist and loyal orgtheory commenter Howard E. Aldrich is featured in a video about his intellectual trajectory and the history of…

  • CfP: DEADLINE FRIDAY: Mapping the Field: Race, Racism and Ethnicity 31st January

    The BSA Race and Ethnicity Study Group conference will be held on Friday 31st January, 2014 at Newman University, Birmingham, UK. The deadline for the call for papers is November 29th and registration is now open for the conference. All the details are below: Mapping the Field: Contemporary Theories of Race, Racism and Ethnicity Newman University, Birmingham, UK, 9.45am-5.30pm Friday…

  • Call for Papers: “Cute Studies,” a special issue of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture

    Call for Papers: “Cute Studies,” a special issue of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture Cuteness has a global reach: it is an affective response; an aesthetic category; a performative act of self-expression; and an immensely popular form of consumption. This themed issue of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture is intended to…

  • A dialogue between phenomenology and realism in pedagogical and educational research

    The workshop forms part of the activity to support our Social Sciences strategic priorities for 2013-14 and falls under the Teaching research methods stream. The workshop is free to attend for delegates from both subscribing and non-subscribing institutions but booking is essential to secure your place as numbers are limited. The workshop aims to stimulate debate around the…

  • Detaching ‘agency’ and ‘choice’ from voluntarism

    I read an interesting paper by Ros Gill earlier which nicely frames one of my main theoretical interests. It’s a reflection on shifting fashions in how the relationship between culture and subjectivity has been conceptualised within cultural studies. This bit in particular caught my attention and the clarity with which it diagnoses this common explanatory…

  • “Do you know what I mean?”: Internal Conversation, Human Relationships and External Speech

    I’ve recently blogged about the role which obsessiveness plays in constituting differing modes of reflexivity. To recap: there is no logically necessary end point to deliberations and thus we must all negotiate, in different ways, the need to draw deliberations to a close so as to reach decisions about what to do and then actually do it*. Some…

  • Theorising Heterogeneity for Sociology

    I’ve recently been reading Magoroh Maruyama’s writing on the second cybernetics and I’m quite taken with it. There’s a context to his work which I only dimly understand, given my lack of grounding in the first cybernetics, though I’m still finding his writing extremely thought-provoking. One of the key themes seems to be the critique of an exclusive…

  • The Phenomenology of Inertia

    I wrote a few weeks ago about obsessiveness and how I understand it in terms of internal conversation. I’m particularly interested in the role that differing forms of obsessiveness, as a generic term for difficulty with drawing deliberations to a close, plays in making decision making difficult. There’s no logically necessary end point to our rumination about…

  • Enduring Love? Couple Relationships in the 21st Century

    Enduring Love? Couple Relationships in the 21st Century The Enduring Love? project is a major ESRC-funded study (2011-2013) that has been exploring how couples experience, understand and sustain their long-term relationships. To celebrate the end of the project we are hosting an event to launch the study findings and, with our dynamic array of speakers, to provoke wider discussion…

  • Imagine taking a Udacity class and being able to …..

    We are launching a whole new course experience designed to make sure you succeed. Imagine taking a Udacity class and being able to: Work with coaches who are available to give you personalized feedback, to guide your learning, and even to help you with code review. Build amazing projects that integrate what you’ve learned, for fun and…

  • The latent authoritarianism of libertarian politics

    I only really began to interact with political scientists last year, when I went to run a political science and social policy blog on a full time basis. The experience was an odd one, as I realised that I wasn’t actually as interested in politics (in a substantive academic sense) as I’d previously thought I was. But…

  • Holy Crap! Intersections of the Popular and the Sacred in Youth Cultures

    Holy Crap! Intersections of the Popular and the Sacred in Youth Cultures 28–29 August 2014, Helsinki, Finland Call for Papers and Sessions Holy Crap! is an international conference organised by the Finnish Youth Research Society and Network, focusing on the interrelations between popular culture, youth and the sacred. The conference aims at interrogating understandings of…

  • The Sociology of Soldiers Reuniting With Their Dogs (no, really)

    I’m someone who likes animals. I’m also someone who spends a lot of time procrastinating on youtube. These two facts converged some time ago when I noticed an interesting trend for youtube videos, usually filmed by female partners, capturing usually male soldiers being reunited with their dogs. Turns out Buzzfeed noticed it too: I love…

  • Sunny Hundal’s views on the future of blogging

    I’ve always liked Sunny Hundal and Liberal Conspiracy. I blogged there once ages ago and never got round to writing a follow up. I’ve always been irritated by those who refused to see any value in what Sunny did with the site (whatever personal objection they had to him or his politics) and was sad…

  • BSA Early Career Theorists’ Symposium

    Early Career Theorists’ Symposium 6th June, 2014, held at the London School of Economics Call for Abstracts The Early Career Theorists’ Symposium is a special one-day symposium for up-and-coming theorists, organized on behalf of the British Sociological Association’s Theory Study Group. This symposium aims to bring together sociologists at a relatively early stage in their…

  • Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? An animated conversation with Noam Chomsky

  • Girlhood Reading Group at the University of Warwick

    The recent controversy surrounding Miley Cyrus’ provocative performance at the 2013 Video Music Awards has brought the discussion of girlhood to the forefront of popular culture. The commentators puzzled over the star’s transformation — reading Cyrus as both liberated and corrupt, honest and disingenuous —and their bafflement reflected the incongruities at the heart of the…

  • Big Data Behaviourism

      From Science Rock Stars    

  • Robert Skidelsky, John Rawls and Political Philosophy

    I saw this earlier on the LSE Politics Blog and had a very satisfying flashback to being a political philosophy masters student. My struggle to articulate the intense frustration political philosophy of this sort provoked in me is what left me so ready to switch to sociology once I understood what it was: You say ‘Post…

  • Commonality and Difference

    I started using the terms ‘commonality’ and ‘difference’ a few years ago when writing this paper on asexuality. I didn’t really have a substantive theory of what I meant by them and, in retrospect, this is the one thing I don’t like about a paper I’m otherwise quite proud of. I introduce the two phrases…

  • Living With The H-Index: Metric Assemblages In The Contemporary Academy

  • The History of the UK Blogosphere

    There’s a great post on A Very Public Sociologist reflecting on how the political blogosphere in the UK has changed since the author began blogging. It strengthens my conviction that the blogosphere would be an extremely conducive object for a field analysis looking at how, say, the ‘political blogosphere’ elaborated itself through interaction at the…