While reading Hemingway’s engaging memoir of life in Paris (A Moveable Feast) in the 1920s I came across a passage that struck a cord, though I hope I have more patience than Hemingway – he of the notoriously short fuse – had available to him. When he was writing in a Parisian café, deep in… Read More »
I have always had a quiet interest in what was once openly discussed and occasionally commended as ‘muckraking sociology’. This may not surprise those who have read my previous blogs. But I was recently reminded of the existence of a book called ‘Muckraking Sociology: Research as Social Criticism’, edited by Gary Marx and published in… Read More »
On 31 December 2019 I was apparently driving at 37 mph in a 30 mph area in Cambridge, or so a police camera claimed. I didn’t contest this when I received a communication from the police. Instead I paid the requisite fine of £100 by telephone within the prescribed timetable (actually on 27 February 2020).… Read More »
I used to say to my students ‘never underestimate the cynicism of governments, whetever their political complexion’. Ok, this was shorthand: I didn’t strictly mean ‘cynicism’. Now perhaps I can clarify what I meant, having just read John Bolton’s The Room Where it Happened. What is abundantly clear from Bolton’s careful and well written account of… Read More »
The temptation to dismiss people who act against their own interests as ‘stupid’ should be resisted. How often did we hear that working-class ‘northerners’ who voted Brexit, or for an Old Etonian charlatan as PM, were ‘beyond stupid’ and deserved their inevitable punishment? Of course there exists a long history of sociologists trying to explain… Read More »
In the summer of 2002 I travelled with Annette and Sasha to the ISA XV World Congress of Sociology in Brisbane. It was an eventful trip – my first visit to Australia – and I have just discovered a diary I wrote at the time (one happy consequence of a small study replete to overflowing… Read More »
In a recent paper – presently under peer review – I wrote about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the UK. I argued, as I have repeatedly, that the UK was a ‘fractured society’ when it arrived and that it is taking a damaging if predictable course. I will not repeat myself here. What… Read More »
I have been reading Lefebvre’s little summative book on ‘rhythmanalysis’. I found it intriguing and irritating in equal measure. It was intriguing because I can see potential in using rhythms in understanding and explaining social phenomena, and it was irritating because there was a singular failure to illustrate just how and why this might be… Read More »
Two sets of conversations come to mind, the first with a longstanding friend and colleague, an academic in social and health policy who served as chair of important NHS Trusts; and the second an academic in social epidemiology who conducts research and leads national and international efforts to reduce health inequity. Both dialogues reflected tensions,… Read More »
The current lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic has, I am sure, led many people to re-assess their circumstances, projects and aspirations. The first thing to say in this very personal and hence circumscribed re-appraisal is that I am exceptionally fortunate in my starting point. I am only too aware that a confinement between walls… Read More »