Tag: sociology

  • The institutional health of Sociology in the UK

    I’ve been under the impression that Sociology’s institutional health has been declining in the UK for some time: less A level students and less undergraduates means less capacity for the discipline to reproduce itself institutionally. It turns out this is a great example of the necessity of continuing to check, as I’d assumed the negative […]

  • Durkheim’s account of the boundary between the psychological and sociological

    I’m rereading Durkheim’s Suicide for teaching purposes and I’d forgotten how fascinated I am by his account of the boundary between the psychological and sociological, as well what this means for our conception of the individual: From pg 17: Intention is too intimate a matter for it to be accessible from outside except by means […]

  • The Hegelian sociology of Gillian Rose

    My notes on Latz, A. B. (2015). Gillian Rose and Social Theory. Telos, 173, 37-54. and Fuller, B. W. (2018). Back to Hegel? On Gillian Rose’s critique of sociological reason. The British journal of sociology, 69(2), 265-285 The figure of Gillian Rose was a continual presence in the Sociology department at Warwick in the time […]

  • Sociology and anarchism

    What a fascinating resource this is: Sociologists’ Knowledge of Anarchism Project. Thanks to Martyn Everett for passing it on. To explore sociologists’ knowledge about an alternate theoretical paradigm also concerned with society: anarchism. Sociologists tend to have an extremely variable familiarity with anarchist ideas—some who know a lot and others who know very little beyond […]

  • Workshop: The Foundations of British Sociology

    Workshop: The Foundations of British Sociology

    This one-day event intends to raise awareness of the Foundations of British Sociology archive maintained by Keele University. This remarkable resource collects a diverse array of materials from the 1880s to the 1950s, gifted to the university when the Institute of Sociology was dissolved in 1955. ‘Members of the societies founded The Sociological Review, contributed to early […]

  • There once was a ‘sociology movement’: could there be one again?

    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 order to facilitate their amelioration, giving […]

  • How can Sociology be inspired by its own archive?

    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 it dissolved in 1955. This […]

  • The sociology of quantitative methods in the U.K. 

    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 spin on the familiar problem […]

  • Erving Goffman: the rag-and-bone man of Sociology

    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 us see that individual experiences […]

  • The (un)productive chaos of disciplines

    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 allowed to become too uncontrolled […]

  • Why are there 3 philosophy magazines but no sociology one?

    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 publications? Is it because the […]

  • Sociology and Fiction: a @thesocreview Special Feature

    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 Social Fictions Showing, not telling: […]

  • Re-orienting Sociological Thought: May 11th at @CardiffSOCSI

    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 symposium brings together advocates of […]

  • an interview with Christian Smith about the need for sociology to do ontology

  • Violent Abandonment: researching the Calais Refugee Camp – @SocioWarwick Seminar Wednesday 20 January

    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 have become the de facto solution to […]