I wish this research by the telecoms regulator Ofcom had received more widespread attention. They found that 4.7 million UK homes have struggled to afford their telecoms bills this year, with over a million households cutting back on spending on things like food and clothes in order to pay these bills.
Dear colleagues and friends, BEKS Istanbul was founded in 2010 by a group of scholars and students from the Sociology department at Mimar Sinan University to make independent scientific research and share their results with the democratic public opinion, especially on “difficult” issues in need of public debate and left […]
I’m so excited the book I’ve been working on with Lambros Fatsis over the last few years is coming out in June. It’s the result of a long conversation we’ve had about our mutual frustrations concerning ‘public sociology’ which led us to rethink what it means to be public scholars once digital platforms are ubiquitous and the public sphere has been decimated by COVID-19.
I thought this observation from Dylan Riley in the recent New Left Review was crucial for understanding the class politics of the pandemic. Particularly with regards to what I’ve come to think of as the lumpen-libertarian uprising which is unfolding as a reaction against elites, globalism and lockdown in a way which gets past the constraints which have held back the far-right.
In the last few months we’ve seen the large social platforms take what appears to be a stand against the far-right. This point from Richard Seymour is absolutely crucial in understanding the ideological significance of this move, lest it be seen as a damascene conversion to civic responsibility rather than […]
“Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so entrenched in practice? That education is not an affair of “telling” and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory.”
Following from this afternoon’s post about John Dewey, I wanted to share this extract from later in Democracy and Education about the socialising role played by communities. He explains how the groups to which an individual belongs inevitably exercises an influence over them, by virtue of that belonging. I understanding him to be saying these are educative in the sense that they provide an environment which solicits certain responses by virtue of collaborating as part of a more or less shared existence.
I found this really helpful for revisiting my PhD, seven years on, in order to finally publish from it. I’m broadly sympathetic with the project expressed in this lecture but the point of departure is his claim that higher education increases the capacity for reflexivity. This just isn’t true as […]
How would John Dewey have understood the influence of social platforms on adolescents? I found myself wondering this because of the central role which transmission plays in his understanding of socialisation.
The current health crisis has swept the world, provoking worldwide change at the political, economic, and social levels. Scholars have been caught in two contradicting roles: experts discussing the causes and consequences of the pandemic and victims of the pandemic workflows’ extensive impact. They have been forced to change their work dynamics and rethink the Academy’s processes and offering during this time.
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In my sixth month of lockdown, I’ve rediscovered my love of breakcore:
They made a statue of us
The tourists come and stare at us
The sculptor’s marble sends regards
“Greater digital literacy is often the recommendation for dealing with the effects of social media within society, but this ignores the fact that educators are actively involved in these conversations not simply aware they exist”
Why do social theorists use diagrams? How coherently are they integrated into arguments? How skilfully do they tend to deploy them?
The pandemic has thrown a harsh spotlight on digital inequalities within higher education. The university campus brought staff and students into a shared space, with a degree of infrastructural provision which created at least an appearance of digital equality.
I wrote this almost 15 years in my first year as a sociology student, having abandoned a planned political philosophy PhD to take a social research MA instead because of a sudden fascination with empirical research.
Unfortunately the YouTube embed doesn’t work properly on new WordPress, but please do start this track at 15 minutes 11 seconds:
