Within contemporary British Sociology, it can seem like a strange question to ask if the discipline has a moral vision. There are moral commitments which animate much of the activity which takes place within it, manifested in a range of motives including revealing vested interests through critique of ideology, describing inequalities in […]
What can sociology learn from its archive? In asking this question, I mean archive in the broadest sense, far beyond the formal outputs of the discipline. I spent much of yesterday in the Foundations of British Sociology archive at Keele University, gifted to the university by the Institute of Sociology when […]
Some tweets about this blog post worry me because it appears as if people think this is my analysis. It’s not. These are my notes on the excellent paper below which I’d strongly recommend reading in full. This thought-provoking article by Malcolm Williams, Luke Sloan and Charlotte Brookfield offers a new […]
There’s a wonderful essay by the playwright Alan Bennet in the London Review of Books, written 35+ years ago, reflecting on his fascination with Erving Goffman’s micro-sociology. His preoccupation was with the minutiae of everyday conduct, identified and described so astutely in Goffman’s work. Sociological observations in this register highlight our commonality, helping […]
Why do psychologists and economists enjoy more prominence in the public sphere than sociologists? I’ve been thinking a lot in the last couple of days about what seems to me to be a failure of sociology to value or encourage media engagement by sociologists. It should go without saying that these […]
An interesting extract from Conflict In The Academy, by Marcus Morgan and Patrick Baert. From loc 556-569: As Wyn Grant has noted in reference to the history of the discipline of Political Science in the United Kingdom, ‘intellectual openness and tolerance of eclecticism has its merits, but if it is […]
I just spotted New Philosopher for the first time, in an airport newsagents. I’ve occasionally bought or subscribed to Philosopher’s Magazine and Philosophy Now in the past. That makes three popular magazines about philosophy aimed at a general audience. Why such an abundance of philosophy magazines and yet no comparable sociology […]
I think this is come out really well. Get in touch if you’d like to contribute something further: Imagining Futures: From Sociology of the Future to Future Fictions The Future Perfect Writing Fiction and Writing Social Science Life Chances: Co-written re-imagined welfare utopias through a fictional novel Patricia Leavy on […]
Re-orienting Sociological Thought? Glamorgan Council Chamber, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences Cardiff University 2pm to 4pm, Wednesday, May 11th 2016 In recent years, we’ve seen the proliferation of calls to reorientate sociological thought around new concerns, methodologies and approaches that can ground the discipline in changing times. This […]
In recent years, we’ve seen the proliferation of calls to reorientate sociological thought around new concerns, methodologies and approaches that can ground the discipline in changing times. This symposium brings together advocates of prominent approaches with the hope of a dialogue concerning these calls. What do they have in common? How […]
I was a bit hesitant when preparing this talk because of the risk that I just end up talking about a couple of novels that I really liked and explaining why I liked them. So I won’t actually say all that much about Super Sad True Love Story: it depicts a dystopian near […]
Violent Abandonment: researching the Calais refugee camp Dr Thom Davies (Sociology, University of Warwick), Dr Arshad Isakjee and Dr Surindar Dhesi (Geography, University of Birmingham) Abstract: Surviving in informal refugee camps is fast becoming the lived reality for thousands of refugees and migrants who are entering Europe. Abandoned and neglected, these spaces […]
I’m quite taken with what I’d call, following Daniel Chernilo, the philosophical sociology of Bruno Latour. This confuses me slightly because I’m not a fan of the actual social science that ensues. But these ideas from his dialogue with Graham Harman really speak to me: Philosophy is not in the […]
BSA Sociology and Feminism Event Wednesday 16 December 2015 4pm – 6pm Kings Place, 90 York Way London, N1 9AG (near Kings Cross) Gender Struggles? Feminism? Sociology? This event provides a brief introduction and update on how analysing gender inequality in sociology contributes to challenging everyday sexism and gender troubles. It also provides an opportunity for you […]
The Board of The Sociological Review are pleased to announce that the journal is sponsoring a single-themed Research Seminar Series (which may consist of three or more research seminars) as well as three One Day Symposia events. The Board hopes to make this funding available on an annual basis. Guidelines for Applicants […]
This year’s seminar series in the Sociology department at Warwick looks like an interesting mix:
The potential value and dangers of sociological blogging arise because of an environment in which the demands of audit culture incentivise the production of ‘unread’ and ‘unloved’ publications which are too often written to be counted rather than to be read. The risk is that sociological blogging gets drawn into the […]
Earlier this week, NatCen Social Research hosted a meeting between myself, Chris Gilson (USApp), Cristina Costa and Mark Murphy (Social Theory Applied), Donna Peach (PhD Forum) and Kelsey Beninger (NSMNSS) to discuss possible collaborations between social science bloggers in the UK and share experiences about developing and sustaining social science blogs […]
In a recent paper Tero Piiroinen argued that the intellectual axis of contemporary sociological theory has shifted from a concern with individualism and holism to what he terms dualism and anti-dualism. I’m not convinced as to the accuracy of this as a claim about the state of the field given the […]
