I have over time reached the conclusion that as a teacher I communicate best with undergraduates, and that as a writer I communicate best with academic colleagues. I rarely teach now, but I have continued to write a decade or more into retirement. Recently a colleague has quite rightly raised the issue of why we sociologists write and who we write for. This has special applicability to me as I have not only commended ‘foresight sociology’ (the study of alternate futures) and ‘action sociology’ (disseminating our knowledge in the public sphere and contesting ideologies) but I have also apparently entered a ‘polemical phase’. While I contest the charge that I have become a polemicist, I do appreciate that my published work is of limited accessibility and appeal outside of academia. My rationale, in so far as I have devised one, is that I essentially write for students and academics in the hope that what I say will (i) ‘educate’ and (ii) serve as a catalyst for others’ thinking. It’s a truncated ambition I admit.
As I’ve entered my mid-70s I have found my stamina for writing has declined. Whereas I was able until recently to shift from café to café for five or six hours on the trot, laptop in tow, I now find I’m running out of steam after two or three hours. And there’s another emerging issue. I have just completed a book – ‘Health: Practice, Policy, Obstacles’ – and am awaiting feedback from the series editors and a reviewer. Having re-read my draft I am quite pleased with it, in part because I say what I wanted to say, and in part because it develops my previous texts ‘boldly’ (an adverb I prefer to ‘polemically’). My message is newish, at least for me; but arguably also for sociologists interested in health inequalities.
A few years ago I pondered writing a book from a critical realist perspective focusing on the unfolding of my career as a sociologist. The plan was to integrate largely chronological ‘sketches’ from my personal career with a more broad-ranging consideration of changes in both sociology and the academy post-1970s. It never quite got off the ground, despite the support of critical realist luminaries like Maggie Archer. Perhaps this was because the proposal I constructed (rather quickly, as is my habit – I just want to get on with stuff I’ve committed to I my head) wasn’t either impressive or clear enough. In the event I decided not to work further on a revised proposal in what would for me have been a wrong direction of travel, and opted instead to complete a set of ‘preliminary’ sketches and make them available on my website (see www.grahamscambler.com). But as I write this, I have just had a new book proposal rejected by the first publisher I’ve approached, it seems because they cannot see it as a high-selling textbook. Hmm. I’m not even sure they are right, though that sounds immodest.
The proposal arises out of a long-held ambition to make available and reasonably accessible to colleagues and students in the sociology of health and illness, together with all those colleagues and students practising and/or studying in the fields of health and healthcare, short expositions of the key theories of some 20-30 leading social and sociological theorists, plus some suggestions as to their relevance for health policy and practice. The point of doing so would be to demonstrate the added value of (i) making one’s (unavoidable commitment to) theorising explicit, (ii) being reflexive about one’s theorising, (iii) encouraging people to position health phenomena in the context of social order and social change, and (iv) introducing those less than familiar with classical and contemporary social thinkers to the exciting resources available. Readers would obviously pick and choose, honing in on theorists of most relevance to their interests.
I initially thought that when I’d submitted my ‘Health’ manuscript I would stop writing single-authored books; ageing academics have a tendency to repeat themselves, often magisterially, and sometimes into their dotage. But this new idea would be the realisation of a project that has been at the back of my mind for decades. Having taught general social and sociological theory at undergrad and postgrad level for several decades, often with the phenomena of health and healthcare hovering in the background, I feel I am well qualified to contribute such a volume. But it does seem that publishers increasingly take what they see as low-risk decisions, as it were in accordance with a pre-set algorithm. Personally, I can see the kind of book I’m thinking of doing well in paperback across many different undergrad, postgrad and professional courses: there are after all very many people inhabiting the health domain.
Possibly I am being overly defensive, and this may be down to faltering stamina and impatience. I’m not sure what I will do if other publishers turn down my proposal. I certainly won’t adopt the tactic I did with the ‘Sketches’ text and just make it available on my website. But I remain hopeful and have already sent the proposal off to a second publisher.
I would be interested people’s views.