The sun and sea of Marbella was the precursor to several family trips to the Greek Islands. In 1985 it was Rhodes, in 1986 Kos, and in 1987 Santorini. Moreover these package-holiday excursions were swiftly succeeded by visits to Crete, Cyprus and Aegina. Most of these were eked out of the opening week or two… Read More »
In two tentative blogs on sociology and jazz I mentioned the hypothesized linkage between imperishable characters and performances and drugs from heroin to alcohol. After all, so many ‘giants’ were heavy users, a circumstance that often contributed to their premature demise. In the first blog I highlighted the linkage, in the second backed-off. Well I… Read More »
This second blog on dialectical realism offers a summary of Bhaskar’s materialist dialectics. This, he claims, supercedes Hegel’s earlier idealist efforts. I draw here on Bhaskar, Creaven and Norrie, as in the previous post. First some guidelines, following Creaven. Bhaskar will have no truck with the triadic process of negation generally associated with Hegel (thesis-antithesis-synthesis).… Read More »
Oslo’s cafe scene is well covered in Café Society, which I co-edited recently with Aksel Tjora, so I will not trespass on ground covered elsewhere. Instead, this is a personal piece, garnered from a working trip to see Dag Album and colleagues in November of 2013. Annette and I sampled several cafes, from the luxurious… Read More »
I have in earlier blogs introduced Bhaskar’s basic critical realism, going on to suggest it offers a way of coming to terms with interdisciplinarity. There are any number of commentators who find basic critical realism helpful. Some of these retain their enthusiasm for Bhaskar’s original philosophical excursions through to his dialectical critical realism. Others fall… Read More »
There are cafes outside the normal run. They make a mark and become cultural signifiers. I have lucky enough to sample a few. Café Dorian in Venice I might return to; Oslo’s Grand Café, visited in November 2013, is another. But this blog is committed to another historic space, Vienna’s Café Central. I had long… Read More »
Thatcher aside, the 1980s had their joyful moments. Some of these were experienced abroad. I earlier recounted two month-long car journeys around Western Europe in my mid-teens. Scrupulously planned with the aid of AA maps and counsel, and no less finely costed by my father, Ron, these were spent under canvas in sites quite primitive… Read More »
There is something seductive and captivating about Hume’s insistence that it is not logically possible to infer what ought to be the case from any amount of evidence on what is the case. Do those who dismiss his argument have axes to grind? Are they wishful thinkers who have personal convictions or philosophies to promote?… Read More »
Finding myself with a couple of hours to spare between meetings I sat with a glass of wine in a London pub and wrote a short blog on ‘jazz and sociology’. As a long-time listener to jazz of most – non-banal – varieties, and an avid reader, I had a few half-formed views up my… Read More »
When Margaret Thatcher was Education Secretary under Heath (and he was always to feel that she should have remained ‘under him’, hence the record-breaking ‘great sulk’), she abolished free milk in primary schools. To us babyboomers this was a deeply symbolic act, bucking the ethos and thrust of the welfare state. It was a marker… Read More »