What Do Final Year BSc Sociology Students Actually Do? | Media & State Studies Seminar Part 1: Simulated Identities & the Digital Generation

June 15, 2016

“For this series, I would like to give a taste of what it is sociology, as one of the most denigrated sciences online, is actually like. The structure of this assignment, which I am reproducing here mostly unedited, was quite unusual compared to most work undertaken for this subject- essays and some fieldwork- but I think illustrates the variety of ways final year study is done.
In this seminar we discussed whether the digital generation really exists and how we, as part of it, use technology.” … More What Do Final Year BSc Sociology Students Actually Do? | Media & State Studies Seminar Part 1: Simulated Identities & the Digital Generation

Mental Health Help Access: It helps to be middle-class. | New Empirical Evidence of Social-Class Based Discrimination

June 14, 2016

“A new study in the Sage Journal of Health and Social Behaviour reports that social class influences US independent psychotherapists’ decisions of whether to offer access to their mental health services. In this article I discuss some limitations which I feel may have been overlooked by the original author however, the authors writing includes important references to the scientific literature and there is plenty of discussion of the limitations of the study not mentioned by me, which show that the author is self-aware, and hopefully this article doesn’t imply otherwise. This work is both important and necessary for researchers of social inequalities and this potential research programme, although in its infancy, should be commended on designing a study which looks cheaply replicable- a rare feat in social sciences.” … More Mental Health Help Access: It helps to be middle-class. | New Empirical Evidence of Social-Class Based Discrimination

Review of “Labels” by Worklight Theatre | Sticks and stones may break your bones… but they heal eventually whereas labels are sticky.

May 8, 2016

“On Wednesday 4th May, along with some of my colleagues and mentors in the sociology department, I went to the Theatre Royal Plymouth to watch Labels. The focus of the show, as you would probably guess, is labels and stigma- something Joe (the star and writer), as someone who is mixed-heritage, has experienced a lot growing up. Utilising sticky labels as props to great effect, Joe builds parallel narratives from his own life course and the rising anti-immigration rhetoric, to show how words have real effects.” … More Review of “Labels” by Worklight Theatre | Sticks and stones may break your bones… but they heal eventually whereas labels are sticky.

Bad Books, Bad Publishers and Bad Note-Taking | Thoughts after annotating a particularly bad textbook

March 15, 2016

“I can’t say for certain whether some writers are just disingenuous hacks motivated by nothing more than material gains, editors and authors get negligent or even lazy, or perhaps even more sinister and worrying is the thought that some intentionally produce misinformation to mislead us, but there are definitely a lot of bad books around.
Reading these books is in one way disappointing- I’m biased due to admiring the writers and thinkers I aspire to join the ranks of- but it is also encouraging in the sense that it makes one think that I won’t have to be a great writer to get something published![…] The following example isn’t being maliciously targeted for any particular reason. It just happened to be a particularly bad book I started to read when doing some research recently. It might also be enjoyable for anyone curious as to how other people write their notes.” … More Bad Books, Bad Publishers and Bad Note-Taking | Thoughts after annotating a particularly bad textbook

Refugee Crisis Continues | Keep Ignoring Everything

March 8, 2016

“I’m not sure whether this mirrors the sentiment of those currently caught up in Middle Eastern mass exodus. […] following is an edited excerpt of the beginning of Hannah Arendt’s 1943 essay “We Refugees”. […]
Should we be asking these Muslim refugees to change their culture in order to fit in with our Western way of life? […] We should not allow them to be treated as exceptions as the Jews were in Hitler’s Germany. I like to think we’re still far from anything like that, but the direction we’re going in when we turn a blind eye and ignore the lessons of history.” … More Refugee Crisis Continues | Keep Ignoring Everything

A reply to Ed Miliband on “The Inequality Problem” | Just admit it Ed, capitalism doesn’t need fixing, capitalism IS the problem

February 15, 2016

“On 4th February, in an article titled “The Inequality Problem”, Ed Miliband discusses the current gross levels of inequality and the lessons he learned while fighting against it during his time as leader of the labour party. […] I think Ed’s article does a nice job of getting his audience to consider alternatives to austerity and the broader problems with our economic system but he doesn’t go far enough. […] Ed admits that modern capitalism is flawed but is not brave enough to admit that capitalism itself is the problem that humanity needs to transcend.” … More A reply to Ed Miliband on “The Inequality Problem” | Just admit it Ed, capitalism doesn’t need fixing, capitalism IS the problem

Exhibition Review #1 | Soil Culture: Deep Roots at Plymouth University Peninsula Arts | Worth going to?: Yes

January 24, 2016

“The kinds of art I am not so fond of are somewhat exemplified by the first piece I noticed as you enter the new exhibit Soil Culture: Deep Roots. A map of Britain water coloured with a key indicating how the various colour shadings represented something about the soil there according to some historical science.
[…] Her works form an alternative currency of sorts, the main pieces being the massive, ugly ingots of dirt, that have a double-meaning: they point out how nature is not given the value it should under capitalism, moreover, money and the things it can buy are ephemeral- doomed to entropic annihilation.
[…] I thought the exhibition was worth going to.” … More Exhibition Review #1 | Soil Culture: Deep Roots at Plymouth University Peninsula Arts | Worth going to?: Yes

Local Stories #1 | Homeless Homo Sacer, Dog Ends & Citizenship

January 15, 2016

“As I approached, I realised my friend […] was rolling a cigarette… using bits of tobacco torn from the scavenged “dog ends” he’d gathered from the streets during his days. I knew he smoked before, but I assumed like other homeless people I knew in the city, he begged enough to buy tobacco or was given it by kind strangers occasionally.” … More Local Stories #1 | Homeless Homo Sacer, Dog Ends & Citizenship