Hartmut Rosa on Social Acceleration and Time
This video interview is an excellent introduction to the work of Harmut Rosa on Social Acceleration. The music is a mistake given the low quality of the audio but it’s worth persisting with because the material is great. You can… Read More ›
Recent Posts
Ecological privilege and the ugly underside of airborne conference-going
by Joseph Nevins Hardly a week seems to pass when an announcement or a “call for papers” for a conference, seminar, or workshop enters my inbox, or I hear a colleague mention a recently undertaken or soon-to-happen trip to some far-flung… Read More ›
Foucault—The Lost Interview
This is a very interesting companion to the well known debate between Chomsky and Foucault. It also has an unintentionally hilarious opening scene with retro music and an action close up on Foucault’s scalp. Unusually for a youtube video there’s… Read More ›
Book Review: A Critical Pedagogy of Resistance: 34 Pedagogues We Need to Know
Those passionate about social justice issues will enjoy reading an edited collection that illuminates the lives and works of the brilliant people who have dedicated their lives to fighting social injustices, and aims to inspire the reader to… Read More ›
Pro-wrestling, unionisation and American capitalism
This fascinating article on Jacobin offers an historical persepctive on professional wrestling, a sport that “with its screaming neon lunatics, potbellied big daddies, and tasseled ‘ring rats’, has been considered too absurd to be taken seriously”. Yet the dominant World… Read More ›
Sociology as the Science of Human Uplift: The Sacred Project of UK Sociology?
In this keynote talk from the 2014 British Sociological Association conference, Steve Fuller talks about “Sociology as the Science of Human Uplift”. I was struck when listening to his discussion of the early history of the discipline in the UK,… Read More ›
Teaching philosophy through games: 8-Bit Philosophy
Our new favourite thing on Youtube: “Combining your favorite retro video games with legit philosophy knowledge, 8-Bit Philosophy will have you philosophizin’ like a BOSS”. There are more here but these are some of our favourites: (HT Jacobin)
Representation in The Keeper of the Lost Causes
The Scandinavian noir film adaptation of Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s gripping book The Keeper of the Lost Causes hit our British art-house cinema screens this week. The original book, which was first published in Danish as Kvinden i buret in… Read More ›
Privacy in a Digital Age
In this interesting debate from the iai.tv the “outspoken philosopher of science” Steve Fuller (also SI blogger and Warwick sociologist) debates Cory Doctorow and Kate Russell on the meaning of privacy in contemporary society. I’m pretty hostile to Fuller’s argument here but there’s some… Read More ›
Ernest Hemingway on Solitude and Writing
A modest proposal for postmodernists who decide to write plain English
Many of you will have seen the Postmodernism Generator, which for nearly twenty years has been spitting out algorithmically designed sentences, paragraphs and even entire essays in the style of postmodernist academic discourse. Much of its charm and authenticity comes… Read More ›
Stephen Harper on (not) committing sociology
Last year the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in the wake of a foiled terrorist attack in Canada that “this is not a time to commit sociology“. I’m sure we’re not the only sociologists who immediately fell in love with… Read More ›
Teaching Britishness: A Critical Pedagogical Framework
The teaching and learning of Britishness is once again on the educational agenda. Governmental proposals for schools to teach Britishness arrive on the doorsteps of educational establishments cyclically: In 2007, it was the Labour government calling for the teaching of… Read More ›
Andrew Collier, 1944–2014
There’s a lovely obituary for Andrew Collier, the critical realist philosopher, in Radical Philosophy: Andrew Collier’s contribution to realist philosophy and social theory can perhaps best be summed up in the title of one of his chapters in the collection Critical… Read More ›
Asexuality in Japan
The Asexual Agenda has an interesting interview with a Japanese asexual activist: I recently had the opportunity to chat with harris-hijiri. harris-hijiri is a native of Japan, and has been involved in asexual activism for about 14 years. She has… Read More ›
Not despising your inner world
This beautiful letter by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum (included in this book) was featured on Brain Pickings Do not despise your inner world. That is the first and most general piece of advice I would offer… Our society is very outward-looking,… Read More ›
On ‘Secular Humanism’
This post is written largely as a reflection on our times. Yesterday I had the honour of addressing the European Society for the Philosophy of Religion in a plenary session. I was glad to learn that one can believe in… Read More ›
The Doorways Project
A couple of months the Idle Ethnographer wrote about the war on public space unfolding across Europe. However recognising this trend leaves us with the obvious question of who is being excluded from this space and how do they see it? This… Read More ›
The Life of the Mind Behind Bars
A few weeks ago we hosted an open letter by Les Back to the UK Justice Secretary Chris Grayling. In this podcast he talks to Simon Williams, a Goldsmiths student Les corresponded with during the student’s time in prison: Les… Read More ›
Escher Girls: bodies don’t work that way….
This great Tumblr blog collates and critiques the frequently absurd representations of women in comics. This is an issue which seems to have come to new-found prominence partly through social media, with the much shared Avengers graphic below only the… Read More ›
Book Review: The Sacred Project of American Sociology
I approached this book with a certain degree of ambivalence, curious as to the hostility one of my favourite sociologists has seemingly provoked in many of its readers. As someone fascinated by the sociology of sociology, it was exciting to hear that… Read More ›
Computers and Intellectual Craftsmanship
by Jim Kemeny I still remember the large number of personnel needed to input and analyse data in the 1950s: “Computers were giant mechanical assemblages, big enough to take up an entire warehouse, programmed in advance with punch cards. In… Read More ›
Featured Categories
C. Wright Mills »
- Rediscovered: C. Wright Mills’ 1951 book “White Collar – The American Middle Classes”July 1, 2014
- Public Sociology and Sociological WritingMarch 28, 2014
- Emma Uprichard on the challenge of Big DataMarch 15, 2014
- The Sociological Imagination Today: The Need for BiologyDecember 7, 2013
- The Sociological Imagination RevisitedOctober 7, 2013
Higher Education »
- Ecological privilege and the ugly underside of airborne conference-goingSeptember 10, 2014
- Should graduate school be producing technicians or public intellectuals?September 7, 2014
- Andrew Collier, 1944–2014September 2, 2014
- Book Review: The Sacred Project of American SociologyAugust 26, 2014
- Creative Methods in Gender, Sex and RelatingAugust 24, 2014
Mediated Matters »
- Privacy in a Digital AgeSeptember 4, 2014
- Escher Girls: bodies don’t work that way….August 28, 2014
- Listening to WikipediaAugust 2, 2014
- TV game shows and social changeMay 20, 2014
- The Media Sociology of that ‘Car Crash’ Farage/UKIP InterviewMay 17, 2014
Outflanking Platitudes »
- A modest proposal for postmodernists who decide to write plain EnglishSeptember 3, 2014
- On ‘Secular Humanism’August 31, 2014
- Social Theory as OptometryAugust 27, 2014
- The need for a sociology of thinkingAugust 23, 2014
- Self-tracking and social control: what would techno-fascism look like?August 19, 2014
Podcasts »
- Making the familiar strangeJanuary 19, 2013
- Merry (sociological) Christmas!December 24, 2012
- What does the future hold for ethnography? An interview with Alex SmithDecember 17, 2012
- The Tweets and the Streets: an interview with Paolo GerbaudoDecember 7, 2012
- The Public Understanding of Science is a Political Issue: an interview with Alex SmithNovember 29, 2012
Research Profiles »
- Thirty Years On: Lessons from the Home Computer BoomMay 16, 2014
- Bill Carroll: Grassroots organizations as alternatives in the global economyFebruary 24, 2014
- There’s going to be a riot down in Trumpton tonight: on public scholarship and private commitmentJuly 21, 2013
- Oppression Bias and the Struggles of a Black SociologistJuly 1, 2013
- One Man’s Story (Visual Sociology #002)May 10, 2013
Rethinking The World »
- Hartmut Rosa on Social Acceleration and TimeSeptember 11, 2014
- Foucault—The Lost InterviewSeptember 10, 2014
- Pro-wrestling, unionisation and American capitalismSeptember 9, 2014
- Teaching philosophy through games: 8-Bit PhilosophySeptember 8, 2014
- Representation in The Keeper of the Lost CausesSeptember 5, 2014
The Idle Ethnographer »
- The Destruction of Public SpaceJune 23, 2014
- What is the Capability Approach about?June 20, 2014
- Maths and Girls: Sensible Solutions…June 8, 2014
- Trafficked Filipino Teachers in the USAMay 28, 2014
- Asgarda, the “Ukrainian Amazons” – and the impossibility of feminismJanuary 31, 2014
Visual Sociology »
- The Muppets explain PhenomenologyJune 24, 2014
- “Looking for a husband with an EU-passport”March 21, 2014
- Blind Eye ForwardFebruary 23, 2014
- “Timeless love”: ageing bodies and sex?February 1, 2014
- What Africa might have looked like today, had it never been colonisedJanuary 30, 2014