Category Archives: Education/Careers

Discursive and Presentational Forms

My rate of production of blogs has dropped off of late. This is probably in part because my attention has been diverted by COVID, but it’s also a function of the fact that I have been writing my book on critical realism and sport. I may be tiring more quickly too, but let’s not go… Read More »

Books Read in 2021

I have grown accustomed to revisiting the books read in the past year with a view to selecting a few to recommend. In 2021 I am surprised to discover that I read considerably more than in previous years; maybe the lockdowns and lack of alternatives to reading helped out here. At any event, my list… Read More »

Books Read in 2020

I read 107 books in 2020. Interestingly, this total does not exceed those for the last couple of years despite the fact that much of 2020 was spent in lockdowns, bubbles or ‘tiered’ struggles. Twenty-five of the books read in 2020 were novels; 17 thrillers; 24 autobiographies or biographies; 9 books of poetry or the… Read More »

Testing Boundaries: Heidegger and Sartre

I have elsewhere, in all due modesty, blogged on the meaning of life (no less). I eschewed, and pitched it between, fundamentalisms and absolutisms and their antitheses, nihilisms and radical scepticism. I won’t repeat myself here, but the present effort should be understood in this context. I have remained fascinated by the various forms of… Read More »

Books Read in 2019

I can’t pretend that keeping a record of books read during any given year is a matter of much interest to others, but here we go with a commentary nonetheless. If there is a return it may perhaps be in terms of the odd recommendation. I find I have steadily increased the number of books… Read More »

Sociology and a Series of ‘Beginnings’

This is a blog about ‘beginnings’. Why am I committing valuable café time to this concept? For three reasons: (a) it is a significant notion with an extended reach and multiple reference points; (b) it is of sociological import in several respects, and (c) it is fascinating in its own right. The beginnings I’ve opted… Read More »

Thinking Aloud: New Projects

There is a real risk that the transition to ‘senior’ – let alone retired – academic is accompanied by a shift in output towards: (a) quasi-magesterial overviews of literatures, and/or (b) sheer, unadulterated repetition. I may show signs of such shifts but fortunately that’s for others to ascertain (I’m a babyboomer touching 70 after all).… Read More »

Emory University Summer Programme, 1976-2011

The link with sociologists at Emory University in Atlanta in southern USA has run like a thread through my academic and personal lives. This short blog is a celebration and expression of gratitude to the friends I’ve made, plus one or two reflections on change. Dick Levinson lit the spark in 1976 by approaching Margot… Read More »

REF: ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’

Last time round, I was a sociologist in a laboratory-based Department of Medicine. Even before the RAE peeped over the horizon I was summoned by my HofD, whom I had not yet met during the several years of his tenure, to explain who I was and what I did. He was not overly harsh, agreeing… Read More »

Twelve Career-Nudging Books for a Sociologist

Lists can be enticing, but risky too. The list is of those 12 books that played a formative role in the development of my own thought, and it so happens that the authors are men. This is open to interrogation of course: my gender, the timing of my babyboomer’s career trajectory, my chosen interests, and… Read More »