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 ‘shame’ for a new collection on the emotions, plus having added a couple of paragraphs to a neophyte paper (abstract accepted) on issues around building a ‘fairer society post-COVID, and I’m feeling characteristically restless.
Blogs as far as I’m concerned are for thinking aloud, so I don’t fear quality control. My immediate thoughts are focused on what I should be writing for whom, as well as why. I signed up for four chapters at the start of 2021, three of which have been drafted (and I hope won’t require much by way of amendment – I might even duck out if they do). One chapter was on Andrew Sayer and social class, and I really appreciated being asked to contribute to a volume celebrating Andrew’s superb sociological career and writings. A second was a general review of critical theory in relation to health, illness and health care. I opted here to focus on two theorists about whom I have some knowledge – Habermas and Bhaskar – rather than trying to cover critical theory in the round (I view critical theory as an umbrella term sheltering all sorts from orthodox positivistic, even hermeneutic, showers). That was ok to do, though I felt at the time of writing that I was covering well-trodden ground. The third completed chapter was on shame, which was in some senses a novel venture since I felt obligated to touch on social psychological as well as sociological literatures: I meandered from the phenomenological individualism of Sartre of Being and Nothingness to the social origins of the practice of power in Imogen Tyler’s Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality. I learned from new literatures. The fourth chapter – although I have no final details yet – is to be included in a book on the sociology of knowledge, and I have in mind to ‘situate’ muckraking sociology in this frame.
The paper on building back ‘fairer’ will offer new challenges around what constitutes ‘fairer’, obstacles to its effective pursuit, and the role of sociologists in helping to circumvent them. This will be a way of ‘moving on’ from my previous efforts.
As I take a short time-out to ruminate, these are my present thoughts. While I have got (very much) better at turning down requests to do this and that post-retirement, I am still a work in progress. I now routinely turn down requests to review articles for journals, for all that as an ex-editor of ‘Social Theory and Health’ I feel guilty doing so; and I have not yet submitted to examining further Ph.Ds and giving keynote addresses via zoom (which I would find unpredictable and stressful from my rural hideaway). But …
There is often a ‘but’. In this case it concerns what to write about. I think there are discernible risks facing ageing academics. The first is that we trade on whatever reputations we might have established by repeating ourselves in the form of ‘authoritative’ overviews of familiar literatures on familiar topics. I certainly sometimes feel on the edge of this particular precipice (some will doubtless think I’ve already toppled off). Second, because it is not easy in your 70s – at least in my case – to begin researching and writing about entirely new areas, it is always tempting to interminably ‘tweak’ existing theoretical positions. While I have written about several topic areas – social and critical theory, critical realism, stigmatizing conditions, sex work, health inequalities, sport, community and the fractured society – do I have the will, energy, drive, competence etc to engage innovatively and usefully with a different set of issues altogether?
These are matters I have yet to resolve. I love writing, most especially in cafes and bars, so I will need to resolve my quandries. Moreover, fiction apart, I think I typically read with a view to writing about the issues I’m researching at a later date, so a good deal rests on finding a way ahead. Wish me luck!