Oslo’s cafe scene is well covered in Café Society, which I co-edited recently with Aksel Tjora, so I will not trespass on ground covered elsewhere. Instead, this is a personal piece, garnered from a working trip to see Dag Album and colleagues in November of 2013. Annette and I sampled several cafes, from the luxurious… Read More »
I have in earlier blogs introduced Bhaskar’s basic critical realism, going on to suggest it offers a way of coming to terms with interdisciplinarity. There are any number of commentators who find basic critical realism helpful. Some of these retain their enthusiasm for Bhaskar’s original philosophical excursions through to his dialectical critical realism. Others fall… Read More »
There are cafes outside the normal run. They make a mark and become cultural signifiers. I have lucky enough to sample a few. Café Dorian in Venice I might return to; Oslo’s Grand Café, visited in November 2013, is another. But this blog is committed to another historic space, Vienna’s Café Central. I had long… Read More »
Thatcher aside, the 1980s had their joyful moments. Some of these were experienced abroad. I earlier recounted two month-long car journeys around Western Europe in my mid-teens. Scrupulously planned with the aid of AA maps and counsel, and no less finely costed by my father, Ron, these were spent under canvas in sites quite primitive… Read More »
There is something seductive and captivating about Hume’s insistence that it is not logically possible to infer what ought to be the case from any amount of evidence on what is the case. Do those who dismiss his argument have axes to grind? Are they wishful thinkers who have personal convictions or philosophies to promote?… Read More »
Finding myself with a couple of hours to spare between meetings I sat with a glass of wine in a London pub and wrote a short blog on ‘jazz and sociology’. As a long-time listener to jazz of most – non-banal – varieties, and an avid reader, I had a few half-formed views up my… Read More »
When Margaret Thatcher was Education Secretary under Heath (and he was always to feel that she should have remained ‘under him’, hence the record-breaking ‘great sulk’), she abolished free milk in primary schools. To us babyboomers this was a deeply symbolic act, bucking the ethos and thrust of the welfare state. It was a marker… Read More »
This third and final blog asks what next for football in England and elsewhere? The ‘super clubs’ have become mature businesses. But because of the sport’s regulatory structures they seem to be businesses with limited opportunities for expansion, either by horizontal integration (namely, by taking over other companies in the same line of business) or… Read More »
It has been estimated that there were 4740 professional players turning out for 158 English clubs by the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914. By this time crowd in excess of 100,000 were regularly attending FA Cup Finals at the Crystal Palace. The minimum price of admission for a League match was sixpence (2.5p),… Read More »
Football has a long ancestry, reaching back even to Neolithic times. Its early folk forms in Europe and the Americas are reasonably well researched. In medieval England it was often associated with violence. Players not infrequently drew daggers during matches in the 13th and 14th centuries. Contests often provided opportunities for the settling of outstanding… Read More »