Reading Wolfgang Streeck’s recent collection, Critical Encounters, I was struck by his brief account of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Why? Because Darwin’s stance on science seems to me to bear a strong resemblance to that espoused by critical realists (like myself). Let me start with a quote from Streeck: ‘taking a fresh look at Origin… Read More »
I have always been overly keen to begin new writing projects, be they books, chapters, papers, blogs or, nowadays, poems (have you acquired a copy of my Rhythmic Musings yet – proceeds to Medecins Sans Frontieres?). Well, at the moment I’m sitting in a local café in Dorking, having just completed a draft chapter on… Read More »
Occasionally you comes across a paragraph or two that afford an eloquent summary of an approach that you wish you had written yourself. I do so quite often when reading the work of Andrew Sayer. The paragraph I reproduce here comes from his The Moral Significance of Class (Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp.191-2), which is… Read More »
In Notebook 10 I focused on ‘what next’. Among the options were further books on the fractured society and sport. In this follow-up note I reproduce two unsuccessful book proposals, one on each topic. They were ultimately ‘unsuccessful’ because I withdrew them both (from different publishers) in fits of pique. I withdrew them because I… Read More »
A tension I confess to struggling with in my own thinking harks back to Habermas’ distinction between communicative action (characteristic of the lifeworld and oriented to understanding and consensus) and strategic action (characteristic of the system and oriented to outcome). If sociology is part and parcel of Habermas’ reconstructed Enlightenment ‘project of modernity’, I have… Read More »
I have a third idea for a new book. This one would incorporate detail critical expositions of the philosophers/social theorists who have influenced me most, followed by my way of learning from each and ultimately synthesising their contributions. The four people most salient are Marx, Wittgenstein, Habermas and Bhaskar (I am tempted by the notion… Read More »
I remain in a state of self-doubt about ‘what next’. It is not that I am not writing, though blogging has given way to more formal publication. My Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society is due out in paperback later this month (May, 2019), and my manuscript for A Sociology of Shame and Blame is… Read More »
I have yet to decide what areas or topics to address next, having more or less run out of steam on stigma and health inequalities. I haven’t lost interest in these two old faithfuls, it’s just that, unless I hit an unexpected and exciting new stream, I’m only edging forward and at risk of becoming… Read More »
In the second of this series of jottings I broached the issue of fictional data and their authenticity/lack of authenticity in sociology. What about Ken Loach’s I Daniel Blake, a film I’ve seen twice, the second time at UCL’s Institute of Global Health prior to my participation in a panel discussion and question-and-answer session on… Read More »
I agree with Stephen Hawking (Brief Answers to Big Questions, p.38): People want answers to the big questions, like why we are here. They don’t expect answers to be easy, so they are prepared to struggle a bit. When people ask me if a God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself… Read More »