Public Sociology: From Dehumanisation to Epistemological Error Checking

In this essay I explore the subject of public sociology by making sense of Michael Burawoy’s original theses laid out in 2004 (Burawoy, 2005). I offer a syncretic account of what I perceive to be the core dynamics of public sociology relating thinkers and bodies of work that provide particular insightful articulations. Due to the limited scope of what can be explored in detail here I have selected what I see as the key themes which pervade the spirit of public sociology making it operationally meaningful as a practice in the world. Read more…

Working Classness: Class as a Topology of Finance and Status

In this work I am attempting to make sense of the world, not just from my own perspective but to find a formulation which offers a means of understanding the sense other people make from their relative positions in shifting and changing cultural landscapes. Class as a term gets used a lot in Britain but the erosion of language has meant that the meaningfulness of language has become soft in places. When this happens we have no choice but to use qualifiers in order to retain the usefulness of the words we are utilising.

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Cult Behaviours: Avoiding Dissent – Reviewing Prof Arthur J. Deikman’s Work

This is the fourth part of a review and digest of the work of Professor Arthur Deikman who studied cults and identified how certain everyday tendencies in humans can coalesce in cult behaviours.  As someone who has spent his professional life examining cases of extreme cult indoctrination he is ideally placed to foster a discussion of cult like behaviours which are more common and distributed throughout our lives as human beings.

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Male Street Based Sex Workers In Manchester; A Hidden Population By Judith Vickers

This research was done by Judith Vickers, the operational manager of Lifeshare in Manchester – a project which supports Manchester’s finest as they try to find a place to live.  This work came out of her understandings of the hard sides of life which so many have to face and championing getting various supports in place for better health and wellbeing.  One of the main issues which she came up against was the idea that men who sell sex to men are involved through a “lifestyle choice” rather than through a poverty imperative, which meant that support services were not extended to them as individuals. Read more…

What do you know about The Irish Potato Famine ?

This is a presentation which was given examining the infamous Irish Potato Famine and the production of famine in the world today – that is, the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty first centuries.  In particular it brings into the focus the fact that at various times it is not that there has not been enough food produced which has caused famine and death of large numbers of people, but more pertinently it has been more financially profitable for the people who have food to let people starve to death. Read more…