The key advantage of the device of the blog, it seems to me, is that you can think aloud, articulate views that are only partially formed, and circumnavigate peer review. Ok, so it is easier if (a) you are retired and off the roller coaster and/or (b) you are disinclined to be intimidated or constrained… Read More »
This short blog transcribes a thought perhaps more salient and pressing than original. There are those who believe that our post-1970s financial capitalist present is characterized above all by acceleration. For example, Giddens compares modernity to an out-of-control juggernaught; Archer now writes of the advent of ‘unbound morphogenetic society’; and so on. It is salutary… Read More »
This is a quick one-off blog calling for a greater commitment to what I have called meta-reflection in sociology. Meta-reflection refers, first, to the putting aside of time to think things through. Much of life, and more of academic life, now consists in riding a roller-coaster to nowhere in particular in order to keep body… Read More »
I have over time arrived at a number of what might be called ‘basic premises’ for studying the human condition, whether from the vantage point of sociology or many other natural, life, behavioural or social sciences. They will be contentious, but I cannot for the life of me see why or how. I will broach… Read More »
In his Mammon’s Kingdom (Allen Lane, 2014, pp.150-1), David Marquand gives eloquent expression to the transmutation of choice into fate in the financial capitalism of the last generation. He is worth quoting at length: ‘We trust people we believe are like ourselves. In an egalitarian society we can safely assume that strangers will be sufficiently… Read More »
This is my 100th blog, so it seems fitting that it is given over to a reflexive moment. What follows touches only incidentally on the new and growing field of digital sociology. How did I start? Why? And what do I make of it now that I am – I suppose – no longer a… Read More »
You can’t escape theory when doing sociology, or indeed much else. If you think you can or have it’s likely to sneak up behind you and, as the saying goes, ‘bite you on the bum’. But principal among those who often think otherwise are the empiricists and positivists. This blog examines in some detail positivists… Read More »
The term ‘precariat’ has been much used and abused of late. It was Guy Standing who precipitated this in 2011 with the publication of his The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London; Bloomsbury). Since then, earlier this year (2014), he has refined his concept and both extended his analysis and ventured a manifesto entitled A… Read More »
I have long had a bee in my bonnet about ideology. When I learned my sociology its meaning was unambiguous: it referred to a way of seeing and understanding the world that reflected a particular set of vested interests. Nowadays its meaning has shifted, becoming etiolated in the process: it merely denotes the worldview of… Read More »
I am enjoying Piketty’s Capital, which is extremely carefully and well written. This is my second blog on aspects of his argument, and the focus here is on ways of representing inequalities of wealth (capital) and income. Piketty is respectful but critical of some commonly used measures, two of which – the Gini coefficient and… Read More »