Rishi Sunak is not all he appears to be and there is certainly a chasm between his rhetoric of just and compassionate concern and his actions. This is another contribution to my ‘greedy bastards’ series. First a reminder: what as a sociologist I’m interested in is the structural relations – notably of class and state… Read More »
I confess that I first came across the notion of ‘necropolitics’ whilst reading the work of a talented colleague, Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang, whose recent article on gay sex workers and Chinese medical care makes use of Mbembe’s concept. I should add that Tsang’s book China’s Commercial Sexscapes: Rethinking Intimacy, Masculinity and Criminal Justice was also… Read More »
I have elsewhere, in all due modesty, blogged on the meaning of life (no less). I eschewed, and pitched it between, fundamentalisms and absolutisms and their antitheses, nihilisms and radical scepticism. I won’t repeat myself here, but the present effort should be understood in this context. I have remained fascinated by the various forms of… Read More »
From 2006 my office settled in Mortimer Market on the ‘other side’ of Tottenham Court Road. I was now closer to UCL in Gower Street in more than a geographical sense. As well as constantly retracing the long familiar route to Dillons/Waterstones I found I was making more extended use of UCL’s classrooms and facilities.… Read More »
I spent many hours walking into Soho, or more likely through it, even before settling into my various offices in Fitzrovia. While based in Charing Cross HMS on Fulham Palace Road from 1975-1978 I often ventured eastwards via Soho, usually with visiting the – then many – secondhand bookshops along Charing Cross Road foremost in… Read More »
From 1978 to 2006 I had my office(s) in Fitzrovia. Over that period I became familiar not only with its cafes, and those of Soho to its south, but with its bars. Initially I read and wrote in a few chosen haunts, for many years using biros and exercise books. When I was joined at… Read More »
Academic writing has undergone some profound changes since I first became an author at the start of the 1970s. Some of these, but not all, are of concern. If I was ever asked for advice from younger colleagues – and one surely always should wait to be asked – I would usually include the following:… Read More »
Occasionally you comes across a paragraph or two that afford an eloquent summary of an approach that you wish you had written yourself. I do so quite often when reading the work of Andrew Sayer. The paragraph I reproduce here comes from his The Moral Significance of Class (Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp.191-2), which is… Read More »
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 »