Today my co-authors and I have withdrawn a manuscript under consideration in a well-regarded international journal. We were invited to make a second set of revisions to a paper on ‘muckraking sociology, the NHS and COVID’, but felt that to agree to yet more revisions/compromises would be a step too far, not least in a… Read More »
My terminology to describe the phase of capitalism that started circa 1970 has been tweaked over time. I started by referring to ‘financial capitalism’, which was certainly ok, then ‘financialised capitalism’, which is perhaps marginally better, and now I’m tempted by ‘rentier capitalism’, following the likes of Andrew Sayer (whose work I much admire). This… Read More »
In a celebrated essay entitled Ur-Fascism Umberto Eco reflected on fascism in the Italy of Mussolini and asked the question: are there common features to fascist regimes? He wrote: ‘the term ‘fascism’ fits everything because it is possible to eliminate one or more aspects from a Fascist regime and it will always be recognisably Fascist.… Read More »
Any description of the natural, life or social worlds we inhabit, independently of its putative level of sophistication, presumes an element of theory. This is because none of us starts with a blank slate, but rather draws on a symbolic framework handed down and absorbed as if by osmosis from previous generations, lay or expert.… Read More »
I have often pondered on what I have, or more to the point haven’t, contributed to the socialist movement. My record of activism is certainly parsimonious compared with others I know. I once blogged on what I see as an elective affinity between sociology, education and socialism, at the back of my mind a sense… Read More »
The main emphasis of my own contributions on the theory and ‘measurement’ of social class have been on that fraction of the 1% that can and does deploy capital to sway state policy and practice. In the process I have often reiterated two linked points: first, the causal role of class as a social structure… Read More »
I confess that I first came across the notion of ‘necropolitics’ whilst reading the work of a talented colleague, Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang, whose recent article on gay sex workers and Chinese medical care makes use of Mbembe’s concept. I should add that Tsang’s book China’s Commercial Sexscapes: Rethinking Intimacy, Masculinity and Criminal Justice was also… Read More »
I have always had a quiet interest in what was once openly discussed and occasionally commended as ‘muckraking sociology’. This may not surprise those who have read my previous blogs. But I was recently reminded of the existence of a book called ‘Muckraking Sociology: Research as Social Criticism’, edited by Gary Marx and published in… Read More »
I used to say to my students ‘never underestimate the cynicism of governments, whetever their political complexion’. Ok, this was shorthand: I didn’t strictly mean ‘cynicism’. Now perhaps I can clarify what I meant, having just read John Bolton’s The Room Where it Happened. What is abundantly clear from Bolton’s careful and well written account of… Read More »
The temptation to dismiss people who act against their own interests as ‘stupid’ should be resisted. How often did we hear that working-class ‘northerners’ who voted Brexit, or for an Old Etonian charlatan as PM, were ‘beyond stupid’ and deserved their inevitable punishment? Of course there exists a long history of sociologists trying to explain… Read More »