I have not always or only worked in cafes. As Aksel Tjora and I construct a proposal for a companion volume to our Café Society, to be entitled Bar Society, it is only appropriate that I come clean and acknowledge that at a certain time of day I can be seen escorting my laptop …… Read More »
The 1990s was the last decade that I did not feel under undue institutional pressure to ‘perform’. If only I had known! Of course performing is a contested concept, although management seems since to have broken away and established a clear lead, maybe even lapping us workers. How did I fare in the last decade… Read More »
Perhaps the paramount research question confronting sociologists today is: why is it that those being exploited and oppressed are not rising up? And as a follow-up: what are the most likely drivers of social change? In this blog I focus on the second question and consider and comment on several possible ‘drivers’. The primary characteristics… Read More »
I have sought to make the case that for all that agency has causal power it is always structured. It is hardly a novel thesis. Over the past months, however, I have been asked two interesting questions. The first, posed by Mark Carrigan somewhere is cyberspace, is that surely my ‘greedy bastards hypothesis’ (GBH) in… Read More »
There are two queries that have been put to me regarding the health of those ‘greedy bastards’ that feature in my greedy bastards hypothesis (GBH). The first was posed back in the early ‘noughties’. ‘Is your argument’, my interrogator enquired, ‘that the greedy bastards live longer than the rest of us?’ It made me question… Read More »
I was asked in passing the other day about my notion of ‘asset flows’ and in consequence I felt another blog coming on. The aim here is to show how and why I think it a useful as well as a credible ‘meta-sociological’ concept. First of all, what do I mean by asset flows (with… Read More »
It has become commonplace among sociologists at the time of writing to lament the growing inequality during financial capitalism and to take the 1% to task for their greed. In 1998 Paul Higgs and I edited a book, Modernity, Medicine and Health, in one chapter of which we addressed the task of ‘explaining health inequalities’.… Read More »
The view of the Pacific from our motel on this twelfth day of our drive across the USA was expansive but disappointing. There were palms and blood-red blossoms but the Ocean’s greyness could have been that of the Atlantic. A couple of Californians with long blond hair cycled past, he exclaiming to her: ‘Gee, your… Read More »
It was during our mid-term break that Annette and I had planned to drive our hired Buick to the Grand Canyon. We both taught our Emory classes in the morning of 6 March, 1998, filled up with bagels and by 2pm were leaving Atlanta and heading west on the I20. In driving rain we by-passed… Read More »
I am a socialist. It is difficult to write in a detached way so soon after a general election that delivered such a surprisingly decisive and divisive conclusion. I still feel emotionally fatigued, disorientated, and above all sad and angry at the future that faces so many who are already suffering at the hands of… Read More »