A year or so ago, having delivered a urine sample showing an unusually high sugar content, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It was fortuitous, unrelated to the rationale for the test, an unexpected outcome. The first GP I saw said he was reluctant to call it out as diabetes prematurely. He put me… Read More »
The whole point of writing of ‘greedy bastards’ was to expose the social structures – above all those of social class – that major owners of capital surf, and with the help of (a) the politicians and state personnel they purchase, and (b) an assortment of old and middle-class allies that facilitate their endeavours, to… Read More »
Philip Green is almost too obviously a greedy bastard, even perhaps an exemplar of the ideal type. He presents as a warts-and-all stereotype (for all that all stereotypes have their errors of omission and commission), and there are many otherwise inclined to baulk at my use of ‘greedy bastards’ as a technical term who would… Read More »
In case a reminder is needed, my phrase ‘greedy bastards’ refers neither to a propensity to become obese nor to a readiness to pull the wings off butterflies or mug older and vulnerable citizens. Rather, it denotes the surfing, reflexive or otherwise, of a subset of social structures to one’s personal advantage. Chief among this… Read More »
I’d best open this likely ‘series’ with a word about the technical term ‘greedy bastards’. These comprise that subset of exceptionally wealthy accumulators of capital intent on further accumulation via donating, sponsoring, lobbying and otherwise cajoling favourable policymaking by the state’s power elite. The adjective ‘greed’ captures their all-consuming focus on personal wealth and influence… Read More »
In the second of this series of jottings I broached the issue of fictional data and their authenticity/lack of authenticity in sociology. What about Ken Loach’s I Daniel Blake, a film I’ve seen twice, the second time at UCL’s Institute of Global Health prior to my participation in a panel discussion and question-and-answer session on… Read More »
I agree with Stephen Hawking (Brief Answers to Big Questions, p.38): People want answers to the big questions, like why we are here. They don’t expect answers to be easy, so they are prepared to struggle a bit. When people ask me if a God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself… Read More »
Not before time a head of steam has been built up against publications hidden behind publisher’s paywalls. It is just a matter of time before open access becomes the norm. Halting and intermittent progress has been made too on easing generalised surveillance and control of discourses and peer review journals out of the flexed hands… Read More »
I have been reading the journals/notebooks of Camus and Simenon and it is striking, as so often with major literary figures, that they felt they ‘had to write’; they had no option but to translate an urge to commit pen to paper (in those faraway days) into publications. In one respect I am at one… Read More »
‘World-systems analysts are not against quantification per se (they would quantify what can usefully be quantified), but (as the old joke about the drunk teaches us) they feel that one should not look for the lost key only under the street lamp just because the light is better (where there are more quantifiable data). One… Read More »