This will be a two-part bog, the first before today’s vote is taken on the motion to extend bombing operations to Syria, the second after the vote. I remember only too well marching through the London streets in 2003 to tell Bliar and his allies in the Commons not to invade Iraq. There were quite… Read More »
In much of what I have written in formal academic publications or in blogs the focus has been on social class (as in the class/command dynamic that characterises financial capitalism and, for me, constitutes its chief generative mechanism). I have had much less to say about gender, ethnicity and so on. There is a rationale… Read More »
I have become accustomed to writing blogs as thought-in-progress, typically in a café or bar. This one is no exception. What is slightly different however is that it is entirely spontaneous. I have given its subject matter no thought prior to opening my laptop. It is about stigma and deviance. I have previously commended an… Read More »
Bertrand Russell once told a story with a purpose behind it. Imagine, he wrote, that a turkey wakes up each morning to a rising sun, a feed and, well, the prospect of a mundane but decent enough day. As the days pile up his sense of security and comfort grows. Then, out of the blue… Read More »
Pierre Bourdieu has become very fashionable in 21st century sociology. He was committed to overcoming the agency/structure and subjectivism/objectivism binaries throughout a long and varied career. He favoured acknowledging the force of structure without losing sight of agency (that is, real-life actors). He focused too on the dialectical relationship between objective structures and subjective phenomena.… Read More »
2002 saw the publication of a single-authored effort, Health and Social Change, a contribution to Tim Mays’ excellent series on ‘issues in society’. I have it in front of me now. What do I think of it? I am a little embarrassed to say that I quite like it. Why embarrassed? Because I’m not sure… Read More »
My father, Ron, had an indoor fall in early 2002. He was admitted to hospital. He was mistakenly given a double dose of the prescribed medication by an over-tired junior doc (which is maybe why he thought he was in Belgium). I am inclined to think all this irrelevant to the advice I was given… Read More »
I had always assumed that being awarded a chair heralded the opportunity to give an inaugural lecture, but apparently this is not so. Nor does every body invited want to give one. I was quite keen though. But who to ask if they wanted to attend? I settled on a composite gathering, comprising my immediate… Read More »
Yet another diversionary fragment, though this is not the first time I have written about teaching. Can I teach, give lectures and papers? I have often wondered. What are the pluses and the minuses? There’s style and there’s content of course. The obvious answer is: ‘it’s not for me to judge’. Nor is the evidence… Read More »
A few years back, in 2012, I published a paper (in ‘Medical Sociology Online’, Vol 6 Issue 3) with an old mate, Aksel Tjora, on what we called ‘familiarity bonds’. I liked it perhaps more than I should. But then I still like it! Our central hypothesis was that associations of the familiar have more… Read More »