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 »
Shortly after my retirement from UCL in 2013 one of my daughters, Rebecca, suggested that I launch my own website, and maybe do a blog or two. ‘It will give you something to do’, she said. Given her expertise in website design this seemed a sensible option. And so, I think, it has proved. At… Read More »
This blog again draws on the excellent work of Erik Olin Wright, this time directly on concepts of social class. In his essay on ‘working class power, capitalist class interests’ in his Understanding Class, Wright acknowledges that class – together with related concepts like class structure, class struggle, class formation and class compromise – can… Read More »