Category Archives: Sociologists

Bolton, Bourdieu and Wittgenstein

I used to say to my students ‘never underestimate the cynicism of governments, whetever their political complexion’. Ok, this was shorthand: I didn’t strictly mean ‘cynicism’. Now perhaps I can clarify what I meant, having just read John Bolton’s The Room Where it Happened. What is abundantly clear from Bolton’s careful and well written account of… Read More »

A Sociological Autobiography: 66 – Terry Boswell, 1955-2006

A quartet of Emory University acedamics and friends were the pulse of what I have previously celebrated as Emory University’s summer programme on ‘comparative health care’. I was their London coordinator for 35 years, climbing my way from postgraduate to professorial facilitator. Dick Levinson kicked it all off and remains a close friend, as does… Read More »

John Goldthorpe and Critical Realism

I have always been an admirer of the subtle, no-nonsense Weberian sociology of John Goldthorpe. Now he has written a volume on sociology ‘as a population science’ that leads me to reflect on the apparently narrowing gap between his notion of sociology and that promulgated by critical realists like me. He would, I suspect, be… Read More »

Hear C Wright Mills on the ‘Power Elite’!

This is for me a blog with a difference. Ever since my undergraduate days, 1968-71, I have been attracted to the writing of C Wright Mills. It is of course a common form of magnetism. For a variety of reasons I have re-read his The Power Elite, a report and analysis of America’s ‘governors’ in… Read More »

Twelve Favourite Living Medical Sociologists

I have yielded to the temptation to identify ‘12 favourite living medical sociologists’ for two reasons. First, it allows me to celebrate the work of colleagues I admire; and second, it will hopefully provoke a continuing debate about who does what, as well as what matters, in our volatile worlds of sociology and financial capitalism.… Read More »

Twelve Favourite Living Sociologists

On twitter a few months back I ventured a list of ‘top ten’ living sociologists. What I meant of course was my favourites, meaning those who had most impressed or influenced me during my intellectual travels. Without revisiting that list I am in this blog offering for consideration a top twelve that, I guess, bears… Read More »