I have submitted an abstract to the special issue of an Australian journal and am hoping to write a paper examining the lessons we might learn as sociologists from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; and as I write this I am aware that an astonishing 20% of the global population is now in some kind of… Read More »
There is no real consensus emerging on how best to respond to what the WHO now describes as the coronavirus pandemic. It is a once-in-a-generation challenge for epidemiologists. But it’s a tough one, and I’m not about to launch into a tirade of criticism. One outstanding question, however is why the response of the Johnson… Read More »
Life at UCL post-2006, which saw me obtain an internal transfer – in the somewhat enigmatic circumstances that I described in an earlier fragment – from Stan Newman’s ‘fish out of water’, miscellaneous grouping in the Department of Medicine to Graham Hart’s altogether more accommodating Research Department of Infection and Sexual Health, was characterised by… Read More »
I have been asked for my autograph once, when I travelled with a Worthing High School VII to Llanelli to participatre in a Sevens competition (we went out to a local team captained by Phil Bennett). I was embarrassed by the attention but managed a signature of sorts. I have however signed a few books… Read More »
This is another longish blog adapted from a piece on critical theory and health that I contributed to Bill Cokcerham’s Encyclopaedia of Medical Sociology. Critical theory, I suggested, serves as an umbrella term to encompass a range of oppositional standpoints inside and outside of sociology. Marx, Marcuse, Foucault, Habermas and Deleuze and Guattari have for… Read More »
I have not always or only worked in cafes. As Aksel Tjora and I construct a proposal for a companion volume to our Café Society, to be entitled Bar Society, it is only appropriate that I come clean and acknowledge that at a certain time of day I can be seen escorting my laptop …… Read More »