This is an adaption of a piece I wrote for Bill Cockerham’s Encyclopaedia of Medical Sociology a while ago. It stands alone but I hope it also complements other blogs I have written on critical realism’s range and merits. Since I first wrote it: (a) sadly (he was a lovely as well as talented man)… Read More »
Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party Dear Jeremy, Having rejoined the Labour Party in celebration of your election to its leadership in 2015, I was only too happy to vote for you again this year. You, John McDonnell, like-minded and loyal MPs, CLPs and hundreds of thousands of new members are… Read More »
Open Letter to Iain McNicol, General Secretary of the Labour Party Dear Iain McNicol, After over a month of repeated telephone calls and emails to the Labour Party, several assurances that I had not been purged or blocked, and three re-issues of my ballot, I was relieved to receive my ballot on Wednesday 14 September.… Read More »
I have written briefly about a few medical sociologists who, early on, played an important part in my career. George Brown and Margot Jefferys were the senior protagonists, Dave Blane, Ray Fitzpatrick and Paul Higgs their successors. This may be the moment to add to this cast. This is an easy and pleasant task because… Read More »
Dear Colleague, I recently emailed you as secretary of our CLP to say that I would no longer be attending either branch meetings or those of the CLP. This open letter is to explain why more fully than I have been able to do in our brief email exchanges, and to raise issues that I… Read More »
What has been called ‘the athletic imperative’ has been defined as intrinsic to the human condition. Every person, one historian maintains, is born with athletic capability and every person is predestined, ‘hard wired’, to develop that physical potential. Moreover, ‘competition’ is of impressively ancient lineage, even if it is not inborn. It has to do with evolution and survival. The… Read More »
I have in previous blogs expressed strong reservations about using the notion utopianism, discerning in the use of the term a latent predilection for totalitarian blueprints. One of my blogs was challenged by Steve Hall, who argued that we precisely lack and need an injection of utopian thinking. Those who follow Steve on twitter will… Read More »
This is a blog written a few days after the EU referendum. I confess to still feeling shocked, disappointed and too restless to settle to anything much, even reading. I spent the evening of 23 June at the Dorking Sports Hall as a Labour Party observer of the Mole Valley count. It was a long… Read More »
I have not blogged about the NHS for quite some time. In fact the last occasion I explicitly did so was when Wendy Savage and I were campaigning together in 2011 to strangle the Health and Social Care Bill at birth (our talks to students still reside somewhere on YouTube). I remain sceptical and confused… Read More »
Margaret Archer’s modes of reflexivity are ideal types. Although individuals may tend to settle enduringly into one or another mode, switches are possible and, I suspect, not uncommon. I have written and blogged quite insistently on Archer’s modes of reflexivity but cannot assume these have been picked up, so here’s a précis. In her Making… Read More »