I have increased my rate of reading since retirement. I now read a couple a week on average. For anyone with nothing better to do, here’s my reading over the last seven years. 2017 Dexter: Ted Dexter declares Simenon: Maigret, Longnon and the gangsters Talbot & Weaver: Flight of the martlets Rutherford: Unexpected Simenon: Maigret… Read More »
While Stuart Hall was not a sociologist his work has a clear and lasting relevance to practitioners of the discipline, especially to those interested in culture. Along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams he was a founder of a school of thought known as ‘British Cultural Studies; he was a founder too of the New… Read More »
Arlie Russell Hochschild is a pioneer of theory and research on ‘emotional labour’, in the process opening up a novel field of enquiry. Resisting any temptation to ‘reduce’ the emotions either to biological or social phenomena, she argues that they are uniquely related to both action and cognition. Emotions for her, as Simon Williams summarises… Read More »
I have over time reached the conclusion that as a teacher I communicate best with undergraduates, and that as a writer I communicate best with academic colleagues. I rarely teach now, but I have continued to write a decade or more into retirement. Recently a colleague has quite rightly raised the issue of why we… Read More »
Garibaldi Square Old men lean to each other gesticulating their opinions, each like a frustrated lover taunted by fretful minions. The shaded seats are gone, as if permanently selected, a citizen assembly that’s won the right to reward its elected. We accept our lot and hunch, back to the piercing sun, pasta… Read More »
The motivation behind blogging was for me the opportunity it afforded to ‘think aloud’. It was unnecessary to be concerned about reviewers and editors. I could say what I wanted, as it were, uncensored. 400+ blogs later, I took a time-out to write my latest book on the idea of a healthy society. Now I’m… Read More »
The chances of me being invited to choose eight records to pack away for the life of a castaway on an otherwise uninhabited island remain, well, negligible is to put it too positively. So I thought, okay, I’ll interview myself, if only for my own amusement. Like most ‘real’ invitees to ‘Desert Island Discs’, I… Read More »
I have just now sent off a draft of my next book, to be called ‘Health: Policy, Practice, Obstacles’. While I am awaiting comments from reviewers and the series editors, and to pass the time between writing projects – in my local, the King Willie – I thought I’d say something about a concept that… Read More »
I confess that into my 70s my stamina occasionally falters. I find myself pausing, not only unsure how to proceed with what but short of the energy required to proceed per se. This blog eschews further self-analysis in favour of a discussion of alternate ways of committing my time and limited resources. As it happens,… Read More »
There are times when it is right for people to be angry and to express warranted anger in collective action. Even as Parisians take to the streets of Paris to protest Macron’s attempts to further penalise them, the citizens of Britain remain within their home, quiescent if not emotionally or terminally acquiescent. In this unapologetically… Read More »