Neoliberalism found fertile ground in academics whose predispositions to ‘work hard’ and ‘do well’ meshed perfectly with it’s demands for autonomous, self motivating, responsibilised subjects. This is gendered, racialised and classed, too, to be sure, in ways that merit urgent attention that I have been unable to give in this short piece. The lack of…

it is notable how much self-contempt runs through such accounts, and the way they draw on the language of pathology. In the extract that begins this section, the male professor characterises himself as variously ‘addicted’, ‘obsessive’ and ‘compulsive’ when he might more accurately be seen as enacting quite reasonable strategies in order to cope with…

A punishing intensification of work has become an endemic feature of academic life. Again, serious discussion of this is hard to find either within or outside universities, yet it is impossible to spend any significant amount of time with academics without quickly gaining an impression of a profession overloaded to breaking point, as a consequence…

It is all too common today for sociologists to assert that their sociology is critical, non-value-free or reflexive, and having done so to abandon any attempt to conform to the sorts of standards of reasoning and proof which are characteristic of scientific thought.

Early in 2009, when the Obama stimulus was under discussion, I was stunned to read statements from a number of well-regarded economists asserting not merely that the plan was a bad idea in practice — a defensible idea — but that debt-financed government spending could not, in principle, raise overall spending. Here’s John Cochrane: “If…

Economists had good enough intellectual frameworks to have seen the risk of something like the banking and balance sheet crisis that burst upon us in 2008. But they ignored that risk. My best answer is that they were caught up in the spirit of the times, with its faith in the wisdom of markets and…

Although usually described as ‘fly on the wall’, a more accurate metaphor for this kind of research is ‘cat on the prowl’, for a good participant observer is more like a stray cat. She is curious and interactive but not threatening. Occasionally intrusive, but easily ignored. – Sarah Thornton, Seven Days In the Art World 

I am exploring how empirical and theoretical work on the internal conversation can contribute to the practice and theory of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I argue that the enormous literature on CBT (particularly clinical data) represents a unparalleled resource  to theorists of the internal conversation. Conversely I argue that the internal conversation can act powerfully as a…

Can anyone recommend any other videos like this? I think I want to write an article for SociologicalImagination.org about envisioning socio-technological futures…

I mean it’s still a bit silly! But not in a socio-technologically unfeasible kind of way.

Occupy protesters should target governments not City, LSE chairman says | UK news | guardian.co.uk. The chairman of the London Stock Exchange has urged the Occupy movement to blame irresponsible governments rather than City institutions for the global financial crisis. The LSE is the target of the Occupy the London Stock Exchange protest, but Chris Gibson-Smith believes the inhabitants of the…

But don’t know where to start? Then go to automatic insurrection. If you don’t get the joke, click ‘again’. If you still don’t get the joke then there’s basically no hope for you. Sorry.

In an article over the summer Julian Astle, former director of liberal think tank Centre Forum, suggested that the UK had been governed for much of the last two decades by a ‘secret club’: Numbering no more than 15 frontline politicians and a similar number of key advisers, it includes the last remaining Blairites and…

A scandal is brewing at the LSE. Tom Martin was a 39 year old student who signed up to do an MA in Gender, Media and Culture at the LSE. Six weeks later he quit. He has recently initiated legal action against the university for £50,000, claiming anti-male discrimination and false advertising. You can read his…

I’ve had long standing issues with Serco ever since I was a teenager (long and not particularly interesting story!) and, as I’ve got older, I’ve found the extent of their activity and its general opaqueness rather troubling. However until I happened to check the Wikipedia page I didn’t realise quite how much stuff they do:…

Hi, my name is Mark Carrigan and I’m a final year PhD student in Sociology at the University of Warwick. My research is an attempt to answer a question that’s fascinated me since I was at school: what makes people who they are? How do different sorts of structural, cultural and personal factors intersect in…

So this is a draft version of a presentation I’m giving at the International Association of Critical Realism conference in Norway on Tuesday. For various reasons, I’m really nervous about it – going on here because one person has already agreed to listen to it. But if anyone else would be so kind any feedback…

In the corner of the exhibition a three-hour film, Mouth of the Tyne, shows footage of Smith in the mid 1980s, explaining the ideas on devolution he lobbied for in the 1960s: Britain divided up into eleven locally administered areas, each of which would control the ‘commanding heights’ of its local economy. These would elect…

Given that I’m two months away from being contractually obliged to submit my first solo edited collection to the publisher, this is a rather depressing question. But it’s difficult not to ask it. If my only other experience of editing a book is anything to go by, a volume jointly produced with a number of…

In navigating and understanding the turbulent times in which we find ourselves living, the contribution made by sociology is even more significant. Sociology is uniquely placed to provide insights into the social environment in all its variety, allowing for an enhanced understanding of social movements, political processes and personal troubles. The papers presented will provoke…

I’m starting to practically sketch out plans for a project I’ve had in mind for a couple of years now: a social history of Coventry told through life history interviews with life long residents of the city who were born prior to the second world war. I’ve been fascinated by the changes the city has…

I had a fascinating conversation with Martin Eve earlier about alternatives to commercial academic publishing. One of the most thought-provoking bits of the discussion was the question of what ‘prestige’ means in terms of academic journals: reputation or influence arising from success, achievement,rank, or other favorable attributes. distinction or reputation attaching to a person or thing andthus possessing a cachet for others or for the public Journals seen as prestigious have a reputation for possessing favourable attributes: they are well managed, have high editorial…

There was an old woman who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she swallowed a fly, Perhaps she’ll die. There was an old woman who swallowed a spider, That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don’t know why she swallowed the fly, Perhaps she’ll…

Perhaps one of the best things I have ever seen on Youtube:

As a type of social man, the intellectual does not have any one political direction, but the work of any man of knowledge, if he is the genuine article, does have a distinct kind of political relevance: his politics, in the first instance, are the politics of truth, for his job is the maintenance of…

Currently in the process of extending the literature review for my thesis. After intensive trawling through Google Scholar, I’ve found about 60 papers I’m trying to download into drop box for easy day-to-day reading on my iPad. Turns out that, even with my University of Warwick log in, I can only access about 50% of…

In response to this article which castigates ‘the left’ for political opportunism and point scoring without any evidence before swiftly going on to argue that the riot proves the need for traditional Tory hang ’em and flog ’em policies (without providing any evidence for this) with  a claim that Tory cuts don’t go far enough thrown in for…

Interesting article in the Guardian today about IDS’s social impact bonds and their magical capacity to fix ‘Broken Britain’: But the plan put forward yesterday by Iain Duncan Smith, Oliver Letwin and Labour MP Graham Allen to issue “early intervention bonds” to solve the infinitely complex problems of families in trouble flaps away into delusion. Here is…

University of Westminster Site: Cavendish, Room: Pavillion, 115 New Cavendish Street, London, W1W 6UW Map & Directions: http://www.westminster.ac.uk/about/how-to-find-us/cavendish The Publics Research Programme at The Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at The Open University, with the University of Westminster, is convening a two-day workshop in central London on 21 and 22 July 2011 on the theme…

The abstract for a presentation I’m doing at the BSA Media Study Group in Leicester next Wednesday: In this presentation I draw on critical realist theory, particularly the work of Margaret Archer and Christian Smith, to offer a tentative framework through which to study the impact of social media upon social practices of protest and…

On July 15th I’ll be part of what will hopefully be a fascinating panel discussion on sexual categorization at the Understanding the Social World conference at the University of Huddersfield. Here’s the abstract for my presentation: In this presentation I draw on my fieldwork into the asexual community (8 in-depth interviews, 174 surveys and an…

Hi all – we’re trying to recruit another news editor & two editorial assistants to work on Sociological Imagination. The former involves finding Higher Education news stories and writing short (100-200 word) summaries about them and the latter involves posting up links/videos/pictures etc likely to be of interest to SI readers on the blog, facebook…

It has been over 50 years since C. Wright Mills wrote the Sociological Imagination. In that time the world has changed beyond recognition: the Cold War ended, the Keynesian consensus broke down, a globalizing neoliberalism rose to the ascendancy and the internet began to transform human communication and culture. In recent years, with 9/11 and…

Remember when teachers, doctors, nurses and lollipop ladies crashed the stock market, wiped out banks, took billions in bonuses and paid no tax? No … me neither. Please copy and paste this into your status for 24 hours to show your support for the strike against the UK government’s latest attack against public sector workers.

The full version of an article by Martin Eve and Jennifer Jones on the Guardian website last week. Makes for superb reading, particularly this bit which stood out to me after a year of teaching 5 undergraduate seminars a week: The PhD sits at the eye of this whirlwind of commodification, poised as it is…

Core academic values are profoundly imperilled by the government’s higher education ‘reforms’. In this presentation I engage with the theoretical question of what these values are, as well as how they are threatened, as a basis for formulating strategies for their defence. I argue for the need to distinguish between the cultural and structural dimensions…

Workshop on asexuality at the University of Warwick Interview with the Wellcome Collection’s web editor Public Universities and Public Futures Social Theory and the Politics of Austerity Cognitive Enhancement and Modafinil Post-Neoliberal Futures

The government should cut its ties with the “expansionist” European Court of Human Rights, says a report by a right-leaning think tank. The Policy Exchange report says the recent row over prisoners’ voting rights highlights the issue. The report, written by a former government adviser, Dr Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, says the UK has become “subservient” to…

Business organisation the Institute of Directors (IoD) has called for collective bargaining to be scrapped for teachers and NHS staff. They are among a set of proposals the trades unions have described as a “Thatcherite fantasy world”. The IoD put a series of recommendations to government to cut red tape and boost private sector growth.…

This is a second attempt to visually represent the ontology I’m working within in my PhD research.  One of my key aims is to try and offer an emergent account of psychobiography, able to capture the complex multidimensional causality which shapes a particular person’s unfolding biographical trajectory. The top half of the diagram represents the…

Blogs are often seen as a somewhat unglamorous medium. Witness BBC journalist Andrew Marr’s dismissal of bloggers at the Cheltenham Literary Festival last year:  “A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting.” However in conversations about blogging, the product is often…