Open Letter to Kier Starmer Dear Kier Starmer, I am writing to inform you that I am resigning my Labour Party membership and to explain why. It is a story with several parts, but I will be brief. Like many others – tens of thousands in fact – I re-joined the Party on the election… Read More »
I have referred on and off to the chances of a left-movement anticipating, hastening and responding to a state legitimation crisis caused by COVID-19. I have always insisted that to stand any chance of affecting real social change such a movement would have to be class-driven. In a recent post I approvingly quoted Erik Olin… Read More »
I have submitted an abstract to the special issue of an Australian journal and am hoping to write a paper examining the lessons we might learn as sociologists from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; and as I write this I am aware that an astonishing 20% of the global population is now in some kind of… Read More »
There is no real consensus emerging on how best to respond to what the WHO now describes as the coronavirus pandemic. It is a once-in-a-generation challenge for epidemiologists. But it’s a tough one, and I’m not about to launch into a tirade of criticism. One outstanding question, however is why the response of the Johnson… Read More »
My current thinking and writing is around philosophy, social theory and the fractured society. It is a complex project with which I am and are likely to remain happily engaged. I am a sociologist still. I guess I’m essentially an ex-academic though, for all that I retain the title of Emeritus Professor and five years… Read More »
I have been dipping into the writings of Hannah Arendt recently, encouraged to do so by Richard Bernstein’s Why Read Hannah Arendt Now? She is not a writer I’d been attracted to, solely because I found her style uncongenial. But I have found a better acquaintance with her work helpful, as this blog betrays. I… Read More »
Much of my thinking/reading/writing since retirement has been focused on two longstanding areas of interest: health inequalities and the sociology of stigma. This has culminated in two single-authored volumes, Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society: A Critical Realist Account (Routledge, 2018) and A Sociology of Shame and Blame: Insiders Versus Outsiders (Palgrave, 2020). To a… Read More »
Dear Jennie, It will not have escaped your attention that many members of the Labour Party are currently reconsidering their position. I confess that I am among them and I am writing this open letter to explain why this is so. I rejoined the Labour Party on the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership. … Read More »
For anyone who thinks Marx irrelevant to the contemporary world, this passage is from the Communist Manifesto: ‘The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on the… Read More »
I have commented several times on the patterns in my reading and writing. These were not chosen but rather emerged over time. Only gradually did I become reflexive about them. Now I wonder if they are forces for good or ill. I remember little of the detail of what I read, though I can generally… Read More »