Alan Badiou gave a lecture at Tufts University, Boston, two weeks after the election of Trump during which he attempted to come to terms with this enigmatic and painful happening. His observations have a wider relevance, not least to UK post-Brexit. Badiou rightly sees Trump as a symptom of financialised capitalism, which he characterises in… Read More »
The headline from the Sunday Times Rich List 2019 concerns the likelihood of the super-rich leaving the UK en masse (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) if ever Corbyn, ‘an ardent Marxist’, were to be elected PM. Its editorial too defines this possible migration as constituting a significant ‘loss’ to the UK. Apparently the… Read More »
I have always had a soft spot for Marx’s labour theory of value. I’m not an economist, which for most in that discipline would account for my lingering respect for a theory way past its sell-by date. But I remain obstinate. The most I am willing to concede in this thinking-out-loud or exploratory blog is… Read More »
The extraordinary but longstanding over-representation of those educated in the private sector, most conspicuously in the major ‘public’ schools, in, for example, politics, the judiciary, newspapers and the commentariat is well documented and well know. This is the very stuff of elite recruitment and the reproduction of class relations. Less appreciated, perhaps, is the salience… Read More »
I have long been fascinated by the propensity we humans have for what I am here calling ‘malleability’. What I have in mind goes beyond the subject matter of previous blogs, though doubtless it has been intimated or alluded to now and again. In my last book (‘Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society’, p.107) I… Read More »
The notion of ‘erotic capital’ is in some respects more interesting than it has been given credit for. This is in no small measure down to its provocative framing in the writings of Catherine Hakim (in her book Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital) and the assiduity with which she publicised her work. Her… Read More »
In an excellent new book by Erzsebet Bukodi and John Goldthorpe, entitled Social Mobility and Education in Britain, the class (as defined by NS-SEC) distributions of economically active men and women are calculated at the census years of 1951, 1971, 1991 and 2011. Why is this relevant to my ‘sociological autobiography’? And does this Weberian… Read More »
For no sensible reason I can conjure up in my defence I was disappointed in 2017 to read (just) under two books a week. Well, 2018 went that little bit better: as it happened, I read 107 compared with 2017’s 102. Ok, I entirely accept that doing such sums is strange, maybe a little worrying.… 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 »
There is a real risk that the transition to ‘senior’ – let alone retired – academic is accompanied by a shift in output towards: (a) quasi-magesterial overviews of literatures, and/or (b) sheer, unadulterated repetition. I may show signs of such shifts but fortunately that’s for others to ascertain (I’m a babyboomer touching 70 after all).… Read More »