One of my hopefully sparse mantras is: ‘methodology is very important, but nothing like as important as we think it is.’ What do I mean by this? Well, here are a few common fallacies to kick off with: There is one right way: ok, few would sign up to the idea that there is a… Read More »
One needs to be wary of ‘Rich Lists’, whether from the Sunday Times or from Forbes. The reason? As Piketty has shown, they seriously under-estimate the possession of wealth by individuals. It is not for nothing that greed is so well hidden. But this is not to say that the Sunday Times Rich List is… Read More »
It is too easy for those of us babyboomers inclined to toil away in isolation – like me, I confess – to miss out on: (a) the full talent and contributions of our peers, and (b) the emerging input of the next generation of sociologists. Well, occasionally, serendipitously, I hit on stuff that impressively feeds… Read More »
DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY? Graham Scambler Introducing: Behind the Scenes This is a book of sociology that differs from many another. Most obviously it is not written with students of the discipline in mind. There already exists a plethora of textbooks within students’ reach and compass, many of which are excellent guides… Read More »
I recently read Camus’ The Fastidious Assassins, and I found myself reacting with the usual uneasy admix of judgement and feeling. Camus writes wonderfully well and with considerable subtlety and depth. Yet he refuses to ‘spells things out’. This is of course a strength as well as a weakness. Its strength is the avoidance of… Read More »
The other day I attended the launch of a two-volume ‘Encyclopaedia of Informality’ edited by Alena Ledeneva, an impressive and valued former colleague at UCL for whom I have a lot of time. I had hoped to get there early enough to participate in one or another small-group workshop sessions on selected topics, but I… Read More »
I’ve just started John Bargh’s Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do, and it’s fascinating. I may grow less impressed as I get into it, but I doubt it. And he writes so clearly and well. I have the habit of folding the corner of pages containing passages I might… Read More »
In his Rules of the Sociological Method Durkheim offered a significant pioneering prescription for those wanting to study society empirically. Sociology, he insisted, is about understanding ‘social facts’. Such facts have distinctive characteristics: ‘they consist of ways of acting, thinking and feeling, external to the individual and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason… Read More »
Zygmunt Bauman (‘Ziggy’), like Bowie, was constantly reinventing himself, though I suspect he saw more continuity through his multiple publications (50+ books) than may be apparent to others. Starting from a firmly theoretical perspective, he wrote initially on stratification and social class and the likes of hermeneutics (understanding/interpreting) in social science, following up with a… Read More »
Ulrich Beck’s fortunes took off with the publication of his ‘Risk Society’. Widely translated, its key message was that contemporary society is not only characterised by enhanced risk, but that risk has become ubiquitous. There is no longer any escape route: risk’s ‘boomerang effect’ now ensures that a catastrophe in one part of the world… Read More »