Life at UCL post-2006, which saw me obtain an internal transfer – in the somewhat enigmatic circumstances that I described in an earlier fragment – from Stan Newman’s ‘fish out of water’, miscellaneous grouping in the Department of Medicine to Graham Hart’s altogether more accommodating Research Department of Infection and Sexual Health, was characterised by… Read More »
Sooner or later I shall in all probability return to chronology and pick up on the final stages of my career at UCL. But first I have a few more reflections arising directly from the last two fragments on: (a) writing and solitude, and (b) compromises and capitalism. It is a item triggered by reading… Read More »
This is a blog about ‘beginnings’. Why am I committing valuable café time to this concept? For three reasons: (a) it is a significant notion with an extended reach and multiple reference points; (b) it is of sociological import in several respects, and (c) it is fascinating in its own right. The beginnings I’ve opted… Read More »
I have often said blogs are a device for thinking aloud, for me at least. This one is an exemplar for that agenda. I would not hesitate to argue that financialised capitalism is characterised by a deepening class division and class struggle amounting to class warfare. But what does class mean in this context. It… Read More »
I have maintained over a period of roughly two decades that capital buys power to make policy with a view to its further accumulation, and that it has shown a greatly enhanced return under post-1970s financialised capitalism. Expanding on this formula, I have argued: (a) that the UK is now characterised by a new ‘class/command… Read More »
I am delighted to be co-authoring a book on ‘Communal Forms’ with old friend Aksel Tjora (well, I’m old and he’s a friend). Naturally enough it’s set me thinking about how far we have come from the early days of ‘community studies’. Blogs, as I’ve often said, allow people to think aloud, and this blog… Read More »
I have in front of me Peter Allen’s The Political Class, which I read a while ago and which is about optimum forms of ‘democratic’ representation and decision-making in politics. It is not my intenton here to summarise his analysis of different options. I will rather summarise his characterisation of the extant ‘political class’, then… Read More »
Guy Standing is an innovative thinker and contributor to policy formation. He is best known for his concept of the ‘precariat’ and for championing a universal basic income. In a recent chapter in Economics for the Many (edited by John McDonnell) he introduces a few more novel concepts, and these are the focus of this… Read More »
A tension I confess to struggling with in my own thinking harks back to Habermas’ distinction between communicative action (characteristic of the lifeworld and oriented to understanding and consensus) and strategic action (characteristic of the system and oriented to outcome). If sociology is part and parcel of Habermas’ reconstructed Enlightenment ‘project of modernity’, I have… Read More »
My predilection for solitary reading and writing, which doubtless has its pros and cons, is in all likelihood associated with other personality traits. Over a period of decades I have moved ‘leftwards’ politically. There was no sudden lurch towards Marx and Marxism, though I came gradually to the view, articulated in an earlier fragment, that… Read More »