I have long been fascinated by the propensity we humans have for what I am here calling ‘malleability’. What I have in mind goes beyond the subject matter of previous blogs, though doubtless it has been intimated or alluded to now and again. In my last book (‘Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society’, p.107) I… Read More »
The notion of ‘erotic capital’ is in some respects more interesting than it has been given credit for. This is in no small measure down to its provocative framing in the writings of Catherine Hakim (in her book Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital) and the assiduity with which she publicised her work. Her… Read More »
In an excellent new book by Erzsebet Bukodi and John Goldthorpe, entitled Social Mobility and Education in Britain, the class (as defined by NS-SEC) distributions of economically active men and women are calculated at the census years of 1951, 1971, 1991 and 2011. Why is this relevant to my ‘sociological autobiography’? And does this Weberian… Read More »
For no sensible reason I can conjure up in my defence I was disappointed in 2017 to read (just) under two books a week. Well, 2018 went that little bit better: as it happened, I read 107 compared with 2017’s 102. Ok, I entirely accept that doing such sums is strange, maybe a little worrying.… Read More »
Not before time a head of steam has been built up against publications hidden behind publisher’s paywalls. It is just a matter of time before open access becomes the norm. Halting and intermittent progress has been made too on easing generalised surveillance and control of discourses and peer review journals out of the flexed hands… Read More »
There is a real risk that the transition to ‘senior’ – let alone retired – academic is accompanied by a shift in output towards: (a) quasi-magesterial overviews of literatures, and/or (b) sheer, unadulterated repetition. I may show signs of such shifts but fortunately that’s for others to ascertain (I’m a babyboomer touching 70 after all).… Read More »
I have just finished what I regard as an excellent volume of analyses and reflections on capitalism and its future by a group of sociology’s big hitters, namely, Immanual Wallerstein, Rndall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derluguian and Craig Calhoun. It’s called Does Capitalism Have a Future? Ok, so theyre all ageing white males, but as… Read More »
Surprisingly often ideas advance, theses refined, by serendipitous means. So it is in this case. I have just finished Michiko Kakutani’s excellent The Death of Truth, a discourse on our present era, one which has been understandably characterized as ‘post-truth’. In most of my publications, and blogs too, I have short-changed culture, so keen have… Read More »
I have to date blogged some 70+ fragments of ‘sociological autobiography’. They are, as my father would have said, ‘mixed pickles’. The rationale for the rubric was that I intended from the outset to temper chronology and events with bouts of introspection and reflection, and given that I have long been a sociologist, these would… Read More »
Every now and again – most recently in the excellent Does Capitalism Have a Future?, featuring a star casting of Wallerstein, Collins, Mann, Derluguian and Calhoun – I come across references to Kondratiev waves. Maybe it’s age but I often forget its detail. So I thought a blog to remind myself, and possibly others, might… Read More »