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  • Why are conspiracy theories popular?

    This morning’s article on the LSE politics blog was a thought-provoking discussion of conspiracy theories and the increasing weight of social scientific evidence concerning their emergence and dissemination. This is a topic that’s fascinated me for years and one which, until I started to realise that reading these sites on a daily basis would drive…

  • The Empty ‘Posturing’ of Žižek and Lacan?

    This interview (via Open Culture) will perhaps divide opinion. It follows on quite nicely from John Searle’s comments about Foucault, Bourdieu and continental obscurantism which I found recently. Before I express a view, let me offer a preamble: I own and have read a lot of Žižek books, though the ratio between my owning and my reading of…

  • Caught Between Zombies and Chavs? The aesthetics of the crowd in an age of austerity

    I love book shops. There are few things in life that give me greater pleasure then entering a book shop to choose a book at random. While I occasionally buy some utter crap through the enthusiastically scattergun approach I take to book buying, it’s much more common for me to stumble across books that I…

  • The ALEC Rock

  • Rethinking the vision of sociology one might want to argue for

    it may be time to re-think how to situate our ourselves and our commitments in relation to, not only what one is against, but also what vision of sociology one might want to argue for. It is not a mattter, to my mind, of answering disciplined instrumentalism with hyperpolitical posturing that dwells in the delusion…

  • RIP James Gandolfini

    This was the scene I was looking for from Get Shorty but I can’t find it on Youtube.

  • CfP: Gender violence and virtual worlds: brave new world(s) of regulation?

    Virtual Worlds and Online Games now play a large part in society and social past times; they are popular and mass culture. Women actively participate in various online environments and Virtual Worlds, forming a significant part of these communities. However, Virtual Worlds provide a different space for people to inhabit. Cyberspace has traditionally been regarded…

  • “They were stalking the corridors, the lecture rooms, the offices…”: open research, ethics and impact

    The Last Seminar by Stan Cohen must surely merit consideration as the strangest paper ever to appear in a Sociology journal. It tells the story of a gradual invasion of the university campus by those who are neither expected nor welcome: research participants. Encountering  strangely familiar figures in their everyday working lives, befuddled sociologists suddenly…

  • CfP: The Sociological Craft Project

    In this new feature the Sociological Imagination invites short (2500 word max) contributions reflecting on any aspect of academic craft. We use the term ‘craft’ in the broad sense conveyed by Richard Sennett: Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake. Craftsmanship cuts a far wider swath than skilled manual labour; it serves the…

  • Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick Competition for 3 PhD Studentships

    Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick Competition for 3 PhD Studentships CIM is pleased to announce a competition for three PhD studentships funded as part of an ESRC Professorial Fellowship award awarded to Professor Celia Lury on the topic ‘Order and Continuity: Methods of Change in a Topological Society’. Professor Lury will act as the primary…

  • Some reflections on editing books and special issues while doing a PhD

    This interesting post by Pat Thomson left me speculating on the future of edited books. I co-edited an edited book (see below) early in my PhD, with an existing project inviting me onboard as a fourth editor – largely, I assume, because my knowledge of the  asexuality literature was useful to the project. It was a great…

  • Quantified Self and Philosophical Anthropology

    Last week I listened this Radio 4 documentary about the Quantified Self which was much better than I anticipated. However I was confused at what I couldn’t help but see as the vacuity of the esteemed critics invited by the programme. Their objection seemed to be that the idea of self-measurement (as if this was…

  • 3 tips for managing institutional, project and group twitter feeds in #HigherEd

    In the last few years I’ve jointly or solely managed a whole range of twitter feeds – including @sociowarwick, @bsatheory, @bsapgform, @bsadigitalsoc, @lsepoliticsblog, @bsarealism, @digital_change, @soc_imagination, @asexstudies, @dis_of_dissent, @warwicksocsci and probably some others that I’ve forgotten about. Along the way I’ve learnt a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Given that we seem to be…

  • Art, research and sociology’s promiscuity

    I’ve just come back from two days talking, thinking and occasionally getting frustrated by the question of the relationship between art and social research. This is something I’ve been curious about for ages. Here are some reasons why: I think the communicative repertoire exhibited by most sociologists is profoundly limited and I think of performance, in the…

  • Conference: Recognising Diversity? Gender and Sexual Equalities In Principle and Practice

    Recognising Diversity?: Gender and Sexual Equalities In Principle and Practice marks the end of the research project ‘Recognising Diversity?: Equalities In Principle and Practice’, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (PI. Dr. Sally Hines, Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (CIGS), University of Leeds).  The project was designed to provide knowledge transfer of…

  • Third International Conference on Social Computing and its Applications

    Third International Conference on Social Computing and its Applications http://socialcloud.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/confs/SCA2013/Calls.php Sep 30–Oct 2 2013, Karlsruhe, Germany Qualitative and quantitative social research has changed significantly with the rise of Web 2.0, which has enabled publishing of user-generated content on an epic scale. This ‘Big Social Data’ is most evidently manifest in the advent of social media…

  • Do iPods block out internal conversation?

    This is a claim my supervisor has made from time to time. It’s one I’ve tended to be rather sceptical of but it came to mind earlier when I was walking home, with no music as a result of having forgotten to pickup headphones when I left the house. To say that listening to music…

  • The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Sociologist #2

    This is the letter by Stephen Mugford which prompted yesterday’s post. Reproduced with his permission: Laurie, I listen to TA as a podcast, so timing and order can be a bit scrambled. So it was that only recently I heard one on ‘intoxication’ from 2012. I’m writing to you because it provoked in me a…

  • Downfall – NSA’s Prism revealed to dear leader

    Downfall – NSA’s Prism revealed to dear leader from Anonyops on Vimeo.

  • Calculative Devices in the Digital Age: a call for papers

    Call for Papers: Calculative Devices in the Digital Age Department of Geography Durham University 21-22 November 2013 Keynote speakers (tbc): Prof. Pat O’Malley (Sydney)   Prof. Marieke de Goede (Amsterdam)   Prof. Rita Raley (UCSB) The Securing against Future Events project is organizing a two day conference on the forms and techniques of calculation that emerge with…

  • Tacitly assuming that research participants exist in an environment insulated from research

    I just listened to an interesting lecture by Shane Blackman  and wanted to get a thought down on paper (so to speak) while it was still fresh in my mind. He recounted a number of instances where participants in ethnographic research he was conducting cited concepts from other research during the period of fieldwork – things like…

  • The role of universities in social mobility

    On 3rd July in London the Paired Peers Project (www.bristol.ac.uk/pairedpeers) are launching their final report:   ‘The role of universities in social mobility’.   Melissa Benn, Phil Brown, Miriam David, Danny Dorling, Les Ebdon, Eric Thomas, Aaron Porter and Steve West  are all confirmed speakers.   The event is from 9:15-5pm with a wine reception until 6pm.   Please see…

  • The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Sociologist

    This wonderful phrase comes from Stephen Mugford who just forwarded me a letter he wrote some time ago complaining about the largely unacknowledged reinvention and rediscovery which can be seen in contemporary sociology and how it compares to the much more innovative research trajectories which he argues can be seen in disciplines like cognitive science. I think there are…

  • Seeing scholarly publishing with fresh eyes

    A research student of mine was thinking about submitting his first paper to an academic journal. He casually asked how much he would be paid for his contribution, acknowledging it probably wouldn’t be much. I explained that not only would he not be paid but that for some journals the authors were themselves expected to…

  • An interview with David Jay: Why Asexuality Matters For The Future of Sexual Culture

    In this podcast I talk to David Jay about the future of the asexuality community, the implications of its increasing visibility and its relevance for sexual culture more broadly.

  • Some thoughts about the sociology of sociological theory

    As anyone who looks at my blog regularly might have noticed, I’ve been reading Nicos Mouzelis very  closely recently (and also spelling his name wrong up until finally noticing my persistant mistake a moment ago). There are two things I enjoyed about his work. Firstly, there is a panoramic view of contemporary sociological theory, with his…

  • Biographical approaches to studying subcultural social worlds

    In his book on relational sociology Nick Crossley offers an account of ‘social worlds’ which I have found very thought provoking but ultimately quite problematic: Social worlds are networks of interaction demarcated by their participants’ mutual involvment in specifiable sets of activites. They form around sports, art forms and genres, pastimes, occupations, locations, conflicts and…

  • Rethinking the craft of social research

    It is still the case that most social scientists view the research encounter as an interface between an observer and the observed, producing either quantitative or qualitative data. Equally, the dissemination of research findings are confined to conventional paper forms of publishing, and research excellence is measured and audited through such forms, be it in…

  • The emergence of sociological media? Is social media becoming mainstream within UK sociology?

    I wrote a short article for the BSA Teaching Journal last week arguing that we are seeing the early stages of social media use becoming mainstream within UK sociology. I’m interested to know what others think of this argument so here is the evidence I cited: Almost 30 Sociology departments now have a twitter presence.…

  • In defence of the book

    To me a book is not just a particular file. It’s connected with personhood. Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say. And what I’m concerned with is when Silicon Valley looks at books, they often think of them as…

  • The Sociological Craft Project (#2)

    I wrote last week about my interest in sociological craft and increasing preoccupation with the idea of creating a forum (probably as part of sociologicalimagination.org) within which accomplished sociologists could reflect on the processes underlying their work in ways which would be helpful to PhDs/ECRs as well as addressing broader disciplinary questions about the purpose…

  • CSWG Graduate Seminar Series – Negotiating Modern Masculinities – 5th June

    The second seminar in the CSWG Graduate Seminar Series this term is entitled ‘Negotiating Modern Masculinities‘. The seminar will be held on Wednesday the 5th of June, 5pm-7pm in the Ramphal Builing, room R0.14. Presentations include: Joseph Oldham, University of Warwick – ‘The ‘Blair Masculinity’ in British Spy Fiction’ Emma Hutchinson, University of Warwick –…

  • Getting started with social media – some thoughts for a talk I’m doing next week

    I think social media is becoming increasingly integral to academic life & will only continue to be so –  reasons include the increasing centrality of the digital in wider society, the impact agenda, precarious academic labour and the individualization of professional  identity, normalization… I think a minimal online presence is pretty much essential at this…

  • Dewey on Individuality

    Individuality is at first spontaneous and unshaped; it is a potentiality, a capacity for development. Even so it is a unique manner of acting in and with a world of objects and persons. It is not something complete in itself, like a closet in a house or a secret drawer in a desk, filled with treasures that are waiting…

  • Digital scholarship and the tendency of academics to “slip so readily into unintelligibility”

    For sociology to be to be effective, especially beyond the academy, it must have literary ambitions. Mills’ assessment of the quality of the sociological writings of his time is damning. He argues that there is a ‘serious crisis in literacy’ in which sociologists are ‘very much involved’ (1959:239). Mills’ position here is an extension of…

  • The Sociological Craft Project

    In the appendix to Sociological Imagination, entitled On Intellectual Craftsmanship, C. Wright Mills advocates keeping a file or journal within which to record your ideas. He argues that doing so: encourages you to capture ‘fringe-thoughts’: various ideas which may be by-products of everyday life, snatches of conversation overheard on the street, or, for that matter, dreams.…

  • Academics: bring your own identity

    Originally posted on Amber at Warwick: academic technology: You’re probably familiar with Linked-in: it is a profile service for many sorts of people and I’ve noticed that outside the UK it is used for academic networking too, more so than inside the UK, at least in the circles I move in. It has 225 million members. You…

  • LS Lowry and the Sociological Imagination

    This isn’t the blog post I have intended to write for ages about LS Lowry’s profoundly sociological sensibility. But it is a percursor to it because this article so succinctly describes exactly the point I’m trying to make about Lowry’s work: What is amazing, and what confounds all efforts to cram Lowry into boxes marked “pessimism”…

  • What is Digital Sociology?

    Tuesday 16th July 2013 BSA Meeting Room, Suite 2, 2 Station Court Imperial Wharf, Fulham, London SW6 2PY This inaugural event for the BSA’s Digital Sociology Group brings together a diverse range of speakers who, in a variety of ways, work within the nascent field of digital sociology. Rather than proceed from a substantive account…

  • BSA Teaching Group Conference on June 15th

    BSA TEACHING GROUP CONFERENCE Saturday 15th June 2013 Nottingham Trent University Sponsored by the Higher Education Academy  The BSA’s Teaching Group is pleased to announce a regional conference hosted by the School of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University. This event is aimed specifically at sociology teachers and will bring together a variety of guest speakers in…

  • It worries me how excited I am about this software launching…

  • RFR Masterclass – Facet methodology – principles and practices workshop

    Facet methodology – principles and practices workshop Wednesday 12 June 2013 2pm – 4pm Professor Jennifer Mason, Co-director, Centre for the Study of Relationships and Personal Life Registration fee @ £50.00 http://www.crfr.ac.uk/eventsandtraining/training/masterclass-facet-methodolo gy/ ‘Facet methodology’ – is an inventive orientation to researching the multidimensionality of everyday lives and relationships, which puts researcher creativity and imagination…

  • Interdisciplinarity and the poverty of post structuralist intellectual strategies

    Post-structuralism exchanges the undesirable situation of lack of communication between the social sciences for the equally undesirable one where the internal logic of each subdiscipline is completely ignored. To be specific, there is little satisfaction with the present status quo where the boundaries between economics, political science, sociology and anthropology have become solid blinkers preventing…

  • Invitation to contribute to the CelebYouth project website

    ‘The role of celebrity in young people’s classed and gendered aspirations’ is an ESRC funded research project which examines the relationship between celebrity culture, inequalities of class and gender and young people’s educational experiences, identities and transitions. The project has an active website (http://www.celebyouth.org/ ) and twitter account (@CelebYouthUK) and the team regularly post blogs about…

  • What’s the point of sociological theory?

    By maintaining its specialized logic and orientation it is capable of providing a set of conceptual tools that can operate as a theoretical lingua franca, as a flexible vocabulary with no foundationalist pretensions, which can help sociologists establish bridges between their own and other disciplines, as well as between competing social science paradigms. This is…

  • Participants needed for art/research project about asexuality

    Holly Falconer and I are working on a project exploring asexuality through photography. Over the past two years she has done portraits of people across the UK, and is now looking for a few more volunteers to complete the project. She is especially seeking people over the age of 40 and couples. You can read…

  • Call for Papers/Participants – Gendered Knowledges: An interdisciplinary workshop

    Call for Papers and Participants Gendered Knowledges: An interdisciplinary workshop The Gendered Knowledges project is holding a Gender and Sexuality(ies) Interdisciplinary Workshop on 12th June 2013 at the University of Warwick. Gendered Knowledges is a newly launched research project that aims to explore radical interdisciplinary pedagogies in relation to Gender and Sexuality. The project, funded…

  • “What kinds of creatures do we think we are?”: Human Sciences in the ‘Age of Biology’

  • Digital Humanities but No Digital Sociology

    All these changes in scholarship have been taken up with a great deal more enthusiasm by some in the academy than others.  Our colleagues in the humanities have embraced digital technologies much more readily than those of us in sociology or the social sciences more generally.  A casual survey of the blogosphere reveals that those…

  • CfP: Queer Feminine Affinities

    Queer Feminine Affinities Call for Submissions Deadline 31st July 2013 Website: http://queerfeminineaffinities.wordpress.com Email: queerfeminineaffinities@gmail.com Queer Feminine Affinities aspires to become the first collaborative book that collects a diverse variety of written and visual materials by, on and for femme, queer, alternative and subversive feminine voices and communities emerging from within the UK. Inspired by collections like Joan…

  • CfP: Tensions of Rhetorics and Realities in Critical Diversities

    Call for Papers Tensions of Rhetorics and Realities in Critical Diversities Edited byAlexa Athelstan, Nichole Edwards, Mercedes Pöll & Sanaz Raji(University of Leeds) Website: http://tensionsrhetoricsrealities.wordpress.com/call-for-papersEmail: tensions.rhetorics.realities@gmail.com We warmly invite your contributions to our edited collection entitled Tensions of Rhetorics and Realities. The book will be submitted to the Routledge series Advances in Critical Diversities (eds. Yvette Taylor…

  • Moral behaviour in animals

    In this talk the primatologist Frans de Waal explains the transition underway from a tendency to construe animal behaviour (including the human animal) in terms of competition, aggression and domination to a new understanding of a pervasive capacity for cooperation and empathy. It’s a fantastic talk, not least of all because of the animal videos he shows as…

  • The frustrations of philosophers: Richard Rorty, sociological explanation and intellectual biography

    I’m finally in the process of reading this intellectual biography of Richard Rorty by Neil Gross. I’ve intended to for a few years now, given my long term fascination with Rorty, however it was only recently that I had it pointed out to me that I’d find the substantive analytical themes of the book interesting…

  • ‘Trans’ as Everyday Culture @SocioWarwick

  • Deadline Approaching: FWSA Small Grants Scheme 2013

    Dear all, The FWSA offers a small grant of £250 for workshops, seminars, conferences and networks organised by and aimed for postgraduate students. This money can be used for a variety of purposes and can be used alongside other awards. The lead organisers named on the application form must be FWSA members at the time…

  • What are you doing tonight? I’m going out to commit some sociology…

    In the wake of a foiled terrorist attack in Canada, recent comments have offered a fascinating insight into mindset of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper: Now is not the time to “commit sociology,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday in the wake of a foiled terrorist plot to attack a Via Rail passenger train that has some now…

  • “So what’s your PhD about?”

    It’s an attempt to develop an explanatory framework through which personal changes over the life course can be explained retroductively in a sociological way. I’m using an empirical case study (two years of longitudinal interviews with 18 students taking different degrees over their first two years of university) to try and develop a practical strategy for…

  • Spotlight on Genderqueer

    The Spotlight on Genderqueer event takes place on Monday, April 29th. The event is free and is hosted at Warwick University, Wolfson Research Exchange (In the library) between 9am to 5pm. It is being presented by Ruth Pearce and lyndsey Moon from the Sociology Dept. Zowie Davy is the the keynote speaker and there are a range of fantastic papers alongside.…

  • CfParticipation: Summer Clinic Sociological Agency | 9 July – 8 August 2013 | LSBU

    Call for Participation SUMMER CLINIC ON SOCIOLOGICAL AGENCY 9 JULY – 8 AUGUST 2013 LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY In 2012-2013 we participated in an interdisciplinary reading group on the concept of agency at the University of Manchester. Out of this we felt the need to conduct a fuller survey of core positions on agency in…

  • Interested in Digital Sociology?

    Then keep the 16th July free for the first BSA Digital Sociology event. Booking form to follow in the near future:  This inaugural event for the BSA’s Digital Sociology group brings together a diverse range of speakers who, in a variety of ways, work within the nascent field of digital sociology. Rather than proceed from…

  • Universities aren’t going to be successful in using social media for recruitment if everything goes through the communications office

    This interesting article in the Guardian Higher Ed reports on empirical data which supports something I’ve believed for quite some time: communications offices are, at least in some respects, ill suited to using social media for student recruitment. Their role as an official channel and concern to manage the corporate brand leaves them tending towards sanitised offerings…

  • Where Do Neoliberals Go After the Market? Calculation, Computation and Crisis

    Where Do Neoliberals Go After the Market? Calculation, computation and crisis A one-day conference organised by Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick 13th June 2013 10am-6.30pm Room S0.21 Neoliberalism is commonly identified as a belief in the self-regulating powers of markets, especially financial markets. Markets, from this perspective, are powerful information-processors, which are uniquely capable…

  • WES Conference 2013 Abstract Submission Deadline Approaching

    FINAL REMINDER – only 3 days left to submit! Abstract submission closes at midnight on Friday 19 April Work, employment and society Conference 2013 States of Work: Visions and the interpretations of work, employment, society and the state Dates: Tuesday 3 – Thursday 5 September 2013 (Postgraduate Workshop: 2 September 2013) Venue: University of Warwick…

  • Recognising Diversity? Gender and Sexual Equalities In Principle and Practice

    Recognising Diversity?: Gender and Sexual Equalities In Principle and Practice 20th & 21st June: Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, University of Leeds Recognising Diversity?: Gender and Sexual Equalities In Principle and Practice marks the end of the research project ‘Recognising Diversity?: Equalities In Principle and Practice’, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)…

  • Data Biographies, Contexts and Persons: Search Keywords as Windows to the Soul

    INVITATION TO CSISP SEMINAR (FYI): Please join us for presentations by Ana Gross (University of Warwick) and Lonneke van der Velden (University of Amsterdam; CSISP Visiting Fellow) about their on-going research on online devices for the collection of personal data, the enactment of persons by digital means, and their politics. Date:  April 24, 2013, 16:00 Location:  Goldsmiths, Warmington Tower…

  • What is digital sociology? An interview with Noortje Marres

    You can find out more about Noortje’s work here.

  • Digital Sociologist #5: Noortje Marres from @SociologyGold

    How did the Goldsmiths MA/MSc in digital sociology come about?  Is it difficult to unify the disciplines that are represented on the course?  How would you describe the aims of the course?  What sort of students are attracted to the course? Do you think digital sociology courses like this will become more common over time?  You can find out…

  • Interested in Asexuality Studies? Everything you need to get started contained within

    This is the outline for the special theme issue of Psychology & Sexuality which I edited with Kristina Gupta and Todd Morrison. It was published in March 2013. The editorial and the ‘virtual discussion’ are open access (i.e. freely available without a university library subscription to the journal) until the end of May 2013. The…

  • Interrogating the normative

    The Causal Power of Social Structures Dave Elder-Vass, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010, £50.00, 240pp. Explaining the Normative Stephen Turner, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2010, £18.99, 240pp. Normativity is a concept with a contentious history. While most would accept its centrality to everyday human experience, the question of what exactly it is and how it is to…

  • Visualising #BritSoc13 – some geeky post conference procrastination

    create infographics with visual.ly

  • Risk and Rapture: Apocalyptic Imagination in Late Modernity

    FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS Risk and Rapture: Apocalyptic Imagination in Late Modernity Centre for Faiths and Public Policy, University of Chester Wednesday 11th September 2013 Keynote Speaker: Professor Scott Lash (Goldsmiths College, University of London) Apocalypse captivates the human imagination. Once synonymous with ‘end of the world’ scenarios and confined largelyto the religious, the term…

  • Valuing the BBC: A half day seminar at City University London

    Room AG22 College Building, St John Street EC1V 4PB http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2013/may/valuing-the-bbc-a-half-day-seminar-at-city-university-london City University London presents a half day seminar exploring the public value of the BBC. The seminar offers a range of perspectives on the BBC’s role in public life, discussing the BBC Trust, science reporting, research with the BBC and public service broadcasting in an…

  • Anatomy of the #BritSoc13 hashtag

    create infographics with visual.ly

  • Academy 2.0? Outline of the emerging digital culture with #HigherEd

    This is very rough. Much more so than I’d like it to be. But then how could it be otherwise when I’m finishing it 12 hours before the event? Nonetheless this is my first sketch at doing something which I want to look at in depth post-PhD – using digital strategy as a lens through which to…

  • Sociologists Outside of Academia (why in retrospect it was never very likely I’d finish my PhD during a daily commute)

    Some thoughts for the Sociologists Outside of Academia panel discussion I’m taking part in on Wednesday at 4:30 at #BritSoc13 I felt slightly nervous about this panel prior to it because of the change that I’d undergone inbetween originally being invited and the actual BSA conference itself. I’d previously been hugely enthusiastic about the idea…

  • For anyone at the Royal Geographical Society conference in August…

    You should come to this: Queer geographies and the politics of anti-normativity (2)  Convenor(s): Eleanor Wilkinson (University of Leeds): Chair(s): Eleanor Wilkinson (University of Leeds) Sponsored by: Space Sexualities and Queer Research Group ·         The Moral Geography of Sexuality and Deviance Sharon Hayes (Queensland University of Technology) ·         “Oh! There are other people just like me? I’m not so weird…

  • If we want to understand digital dualism properly, we need to abandon the concept of ‘digital dualism’

    In a recent post Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, offered a really interesting critique of what has become an increasingly influential idea within the sociological blogosphere: digital dualism. He begins with what is probably the clearest summary of digital dualism I have yet to encounter: The distinction between online and offline is an outdated holdover from…

  • Digital Sociologist #4: Deborah Lupton

    Deborah is an advocate of using social and other digital media for professional purposes. She blogs at ‘This Sociological Life’, tweets @DALupton, has a number of Pinterest boards and Storify presentations dealing with her current research interests and administers three Facebook pages: Sociology of Health, Illness and Medicine, Digital Sociology and Sociology of Parenting. She contributes pieces to The Conversation and Crikey online discussion sites and is…

  • “I tried hard to be proud of my service, but all I could feel was shame”

    A powerful speech by Mike Prysner, a US army veteren turned anti-war activist, given at the Winter Soldier symposium. This event involved anti-war veterans from around the US coming together to give testimony about their experiences on the grounds in Iraq and Afghanistan, with scholars, journalists and other activists offering responses and context to the veteren’s testimony.…

  • Ethnographic Methods: ethics, practice and theory

    Ethnographic Methods: ethics, practice and theory 12.00-17.00, Thursday, 23 May 2013 The University of Warwick At its best, ethnography – often glossed as ‘participant observation’ – has provided sociology and other social researchers with a valuable tool for apprehending a world in flux. Across the humanities and social sciences (e.g. cultural studies, social anthropology, sociology),…

  • Interesting @WarwickUni Event – Values Exchange seminar

    The next meeting in the WMS Education Research Seminar series will be at 2pm on Thursday 21st March in GLT4 in the Medical School building. The seminar will be led by David Seedhouse, creator of the Values Exchange. The Values Exchange is an innovative web-based community that fosters personal reflection and informed debate on case studies on any…

  • Subjectivity and Subculture: One Day Symposium

    Subjectivity and Subculture ~ One Day Symposium ~ Monday 10th June 2013: 9:00am-6:30pm Institute of Advanced Study, Milburn House, University of Warwick We are delighted to announce that Dr Rupa Huq, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University, and Dr Shane Blackman, Professor in Media, Art and Design at Canterbury Christ Church University, will give keynote papers at…

  • Living Apart Together – A seminar to discuss the findings of an ESRC funded research project

    Living Apart Together: A Multi-Method Analysis What Have We Learnt?  A seminar to discuss the findings of an ESRC funded research project  Friday 26 April 2013 2.00-4.30 pm  Keynes Library 43 Gordon Square Birkbeck, University of London London WC1H 0PD About 10% of adults in Britain today are in a relationship but not living with their…

  • Where I’m going with my a/sexuality research (once I finish my thesis)

    I had three initial aims with my asexuality research: mapping out community in a ideographically adequate way, understanding the role the internet played in the formation of the community and exploring what the reception of asexuality reveals about sexual culture. There’s still more I want to write in relation to the first two points but…

  • Digital Sociologist #3: David Beer

    How did Thinking Culture come about?  Has the way you’ve used the blog changed over time?  How does your blog connect with the rest of your work? Do you ever have trouble finding time to blog?  So is curation a central part of you use social media?  Does blogging provide a space for things which…

  • How will sociology cope with digital data? An interview with David Beer

    I interviewed David Beers about digital data and its implications for sociology. Why should sociologists care about the ‘digital’? What is ‘digital by-product data’? Why is it sociologically interesting?  How can sociologists cope with digital data? How will digital data shape sociological practice? 

  • This looks great -> Classifying Sex Conference

    Thursday, 4 July 2013 to Friday, 5 July 2013 Location: CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT Summary This conference brings together social scientists, gender scholars, sexologists, psychiatrists, historians of science, as well as mental health practitioners and sexual rights activists to critically explore the sexual classifications produced by the 5th edition…

  • CfP: Sociology & the Global Economic Crisis

    Sociology and the Global Economic Crisis Special Issue Call for Papers Deadline for submissions: 31 August 2013 Editorial Team: Ana C. Dinerstein (University of Bath), Gregory Schwartz (University of Bath) and Graham Taylor (University of the West of England) We hear it, see it, and read about it everywhere; yet, to what extent are we…

  • voices and conversations; ‘real’ and ‘pathological’

    After listening to a description of ‘voice hearing’ on Radio 4 last Saturday, I find myself fascinated by the relationship such pathological/pathologised forms of inner speech have to the everyday forms of inner speech which are so central to my own work. The phenomenology described by the radio guest was fascinating: the inner ‘other’ was…

  • Moving beyond abstracted dichotomies in sociological treatments of decision making

    Back when I planned to do a PhD in political philosophy, I was extremely interested in Michael Sandel’s critique of John Rawls. Particularly his attack on what he claimed was Rawl’s notion of an ‘unencumbered self’: Now the unencumbered self describes first of all the way we stand toward the things we have, or want, or…

  • PhD & ECR summer school on Contesting Claims for Expertise in a Post-secular Age: In Search of Intellectual Life

    CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Contesting Claims for Expertise in a Post-secular Age: In Search of Intellectual Life IAS Summer School, University of Warwick, 15-19 July 2013 DEADLINE for applications: 15th March 2013 The current moment seems to be one of ‘crisis’ or at least of dramatic change for the authority of academic expertise. Policy debates over climate…

  • Asexuality events at UCL this week and next

    Tuesday March 5th: Asexuality 101 – Lunchtime talk – Foster Court 130 (UCL) ‘An informal lunchtime introductory talk on asexuality as part of Asexual Awareness Week, organised by UCL’s LGBT+ Curious to learn more about this lesser known orientation? Come along to find out more. Free lunch provided! Open to everyone, and room is fully…

  • Subjects vs subjectification – getting beyond an unhelpful dichotomy (without irritating the Foucauldians too much)

    One important objection to the notion of ‘internal conversation’ rests on a broader trend within contemporary social theory that is concerned with the possibility that theoretical claims about agency lead proponents to make claims about agents which are empirically inadequate. So too that these ensuing claims might find themselves implicated, knowingly or otherwise, in broader…

  • CfP: Normality in an uncertain world

    Normality in an uncertain world 6th ENQUIRE Postgraduate Conference, 10th and 11th September 2013 Call for Abstracts This conference aims to bring together post-graduates and researchers, with an interest in normality, to explore the development, current application and possible future of such research. We are pleased to confirm our keynote speakers: Derek McGhee, Professor of…

  • Request for help from New Social Media, New Social Science

    How do you make decisions about ethical questions when designing online research? Where are the gray or sticky areas? What resources have helped– what do you need? The New Social Media, New Social Science project would like your input so we can assess what resources are needed. Please share your insights, frustrations and questions in…

  • The four characteristics of internal conversation

    The four features of internal conversation: privacy, ellipsis, personalization and context dependency. The first refers to the unavoidable interiority of internal conversation, as well as the topical freedom and the impossibility of misinterpreting the literal meaning of our inner dialogues. The second refers to the contraction of internal conversation relative to external speech, such that…

  • An introduction to multi-author blogging

  • How to get started as an academic podcaster

    I first encountered the idea of academic podcasting when working for a University of Warwick based project a few years ago. It gave a small stipend to PhD students in exchange for producing a short podcast profiling the research of someone within the university, which was then edited and posted online by myself and the…

  • Publishing on the web for researchers