If I were to be pushed into declaring a stand-out café, a one-off port-of-call, it would not be difficult to respond. Kaldi’s at 941 Decatur Street in New Orleans would be my choice. Sadly it is no more. I visited this Bohemian ‘coffeehouse coffeemuseum’ several times during its existence from 1990 to 2000 (word is,… Read More »
In one of those ad hoc conversations in a local café in the autumn of 2000, two old friends (Ken and Janet) invited Annette and I to accompany them on a journey on the Trans-Siberian railway, starting in Moscow, ending in Beijing. Within what seemed like moments, and somewhere in the midst of a couple… Read More »
I think Habermas’ ‘Legitimation Crisis’ one of his more neglected books. Published in Germany in the early 1970s it has proved remarkably perspicacious. In this third blog on his work I give a brief outline of his argument, then ask why I judge it so compelling and what salience it has now. In the era… Read More »
This is the third and final blog of the drive from Atlanta to Los Angeles, San Diego and back, a way of filling and slightly exceeding a mid-semester break in teaching at Emory University. Saturday 14 March It was not the earliest of starts as we made the trip to downtown El Paso, parking as… Read More »
This is the second blog of our long mid-semester drive to and beyond the Grand Canyon in 1998. Tuesday 10 March We were relieved to find it dry and sunny when we awoke. We completed the final 80 miles to a highly organized tourist complex, stopping only for a swift coffee at the most up-market… Read More »
During our mid-term break as visiting Professors of Sociology at Emory University (in Atlanta, Georgia) in 1998, Annette and I went for a drive. Intending to get as far as the Grand Canyon, we ended up targeting more distant horizons. As we progressed I kept a diary for my father, then in his 80s, and… Read More »
The link with sociologists at Emory University in Atlanta in southern USA has run like a thread through my academic and personal lives. This short blog is a celebration and expression of gratitude to the friends I’ve made, plus one or two reflections on change. Dick Levinson lit the spark in 1976 by approaching Margot… Read More »
I have for over 40 years written in cafes. In the early 1970s I scribbled in longhand, always having a notebook and biro about me somewhere. More recently, of course, I have carried a lightweight laptop around, several books chapters or papers on the go simultaneously. Still , however, I often link the writing of… Read More »
This blog is the second in a short series on the work of Habermas and issues that arise from it. The focus is on the notions of civil society and the public sphere and how these have changed as spaces of resistance and unrest. Habermas’ early study of the rise of the bourgeois public sphere,… Read More »
I have yielded to the temptation to identify ‘12 favourite living medical sociologists’ for two reasons. First, it allows me to celebrate the work of colleagues I admire; and second, it will hopefully provoke a continuing debate about who does what, as well as what matters, in our volatile worlds of sociology and financial capitalism.… Read More »