Badiou, Trump and Communism
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...
View ArticleBadiou, Corbyn and the New Communism
There has for some time, most particularly among French philosophers and commentators, been an interest in recovering the notion of communism: people like Badiou for example have espoused a ‘new...
View ArticleSociological Theorists: W.E.B Du Bois
William Du Bois, born in 1868, was raised by his mother, a domestic and washerwoman and grew up like may black children in the shadow cast by American slavery. His m0ther died when he was 16. The only...
View ArticleA Sociological Autobiography: 81 – Compromises with Capitalism
My predilection for solitary reading and writing, which doubtless has its pros and cons, is in all likelihood associated with other personality traits. Over a period of decades I have moved ‘leftwards’...
View ArticleNotebook Series – 11
A tension I confess to struggling with in my own thinking harks back to Habermas’ distinction between communicative action (characteristic of the lifeworld and oriented to understanding and consensus)...
View ArticleStanding, ‘Precarity’ and Policy
Guy Standing is an innovative thinker and contributor to policy formation. He is best known for his concept of the ‘precariat’ and for championing a universal basic income. In a recent chapter in...
View ArticleA New ‘Second Chamber’
I have in front of me Peter Allen’s The Political Class, which I read a while ago and which is about optimum forms of ‘democratic’ representation and decision-making in politics. It is not my intenton...
View ArticleCommunal Forms
I am delighted to be co-authoring a book on ‘Communal Forms’ with old friend Aksel Tjora (well, I’m old and he’s a friend). Naturally enough it’s set me thinking about how far we have come from the...
View Article‘Greedy Bastards’– The Capitalist State
I have maintained over a period of roughly two decades that capital buys power to make policy with a view to its further accumulation, and that it has shown a greatly enhanced return under post-1970s...
View ArticleClass, Classism and Class Struggle: More Notes
I have often said blogs are a device for thinking aloud, for me at least. This one is an exemplar for that agenda. I would not hesitate to argue that financialised capitalism is characterised by a...
View ArticleSociology and a Series of ‘Beginnings’
This is a blog about ‘beginnings’. Why am I committing valuable café time to this concept? For three reasons: (a) it is a significant notion with an extended reach and multiple reference points; (b) it...
View ArticleA Sociological Autobiography: 82 – Existentialism, Cafes and Writing
Sooner or later I shall in all probability return to chronology and pick up on the final stages of my career at UCL. But first I have a few more reflections arising directly from the last two fragments...
View ArticleA Sociological Autobiography: 83 – UCL Institute of Sociological Studies?
Life at UCL post-2006, which saw me obtain an internal transfer – in the somewhat enigmatic circumstances that I described in an earlier fragment – from Stan Newman’s ‘fish out of water’, miscellaneous...
View ArticleThe ‘Layering’ of Political Activism
I have argued now and again for a left strategy comprising: (1) ‘permanent reform’ and (2) ‘alliance formation’. In other words, a strategy that (re-1) commends the left to start – as boldly as...
View ArticleEric Olin Wright and Contesting Capitalism
Eric Olin Wright is sadly no longer with us, but we are fortunate to have his new book, How to Be an Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century, to remember him by and to work with. In this first of (maybe)...
View ArticleErik Olin Wright and ‘Eroding Capitalism’
This is a second blog arising out of my reading of Erik Olin Wright’s How to Be An Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century. While the first focused on general modes or strategies for resisting capitalism,...
View ArticleA Sociological Autobiography: 84 – Consolidating the GBH
While I was engaged in trying to establish a virtual Institute of Sociological Studies at UCL, my published work shifted into new areas, at last theoretically (I stuck pretty much with health...
View ArticleErik Olin Wright and ‘Agents of Transformation’
This is a third and final blog on Erik Olin Wright’s elegant and enlightening How to Be An Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century. Its focus is on what I have previously called ‘triggers for change’ and...
View ArticleA Sociological Autobiography: 85 – From Bhaskar to Archer
I suppose there is an inevitable gap between reading and writing. In the late ‘noughties’ I added reading ‘Maggie’ Archer to a long-term familiarity with the works of Roy Bhaskar. Eventually, if this...
View ArticleJodi Dean and Comradeship
When considering assorted potentials for effective collective action against financialised capitalism in the UK, I have so far put the emphasis on a triad of factors: Permanent reform – or the...
View Article
