Guy Standing is an innovative thinker and contributor to policy formation. He is best known for his concept of the ‘precariat’ and for championing a universal basic income. In a recent chapter in Economics for the Many (edited by John McDonnell) he introduces a few more novel concepts, and these are the focus of this… 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 »
My predilection for solitary reading and writing, which doubtless has its pros and cons, is in all likelihood associated with other personality traits. Over a period of decades I have moved ‘leftwards’ politically. There was no sudden lurch towards Marx and Marxism, though I came gradually to the view, articulated in an earlier fragment, that… Read More »
William Du Bois, born in 1868, was raised by his mother, a domestic and washerwoman and grew up like may black children in the shadow cast by American slavery. His m0ther died when he was 16. The only black child in an all-white school, he determined to make good a promise once made to his… Read More »
There has for some time, most particularly among French philosophers and commentators, been an interest in recovering the notion of communism: people like Badiou for example have espoused a ‘new communism’. The rationale for this is generally that throughout parliamentary or other forms of liberal/social democracies in the West the electoral choice is merely between… Read More »
Alan Badiou gave a lecture at Tufts University, Boston, two weeks after the election of Trump during which he attempted to come to terms with this enigmatic and painful happening. His observations have a wider relevance, not least to UK post-Brexit. Badiou rightly sees Trump as a symptom of financialised capitalism, which he characterises in… Read More »
I have ruminated on and off about being an only child and being happy with my own company. I have also discussed writing on my own, the norm for me since my undergraduate days. Sitting in the corners of cafes and bars, initially with exercise book and biro and latterly with my laptop has been… Read More »
The headline from the Sunday Times Rich List 2019 concerns the likelihood of the super-rich leaving the UK en masse (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) if ever Corbyn, ‘an ardent Marxist’, were to be elected PM. Its editorial too defines this possible migration as constituting a significant ‘loss’ to the UK. Apparently the… 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 »