Science, morality, and politics are all highly contested areas and there has been a constant attempt to establish objectively valid statements about how the world is and how it ought to be ..read more

The history of British sociology is an underdeveloped area of research, though recent work has begun the task of reconstructing this largely unknown history ..read more

Should face masks become the new normal, an evidence-based response to the threat of Covid-19 infection? Evidence actually suggests that the policy mandating face coverings is a response to a moral panic and climate of fear aroused by inadequate government messaging ..read more

Covid-19, the Coronavirus, has rightly concerned us all, and governments worldwide have been forced to listen to the medical and scientific experts. What has not been recognised, however, is how much of the argument depends on sociological ideas, and on ideas from social network analysis in particular ..read more

Power is central to sociological analysis. More has been published on power than on almost any other sociological concept. Yet, more needs to be said. Power must be integrated within more general theoretical frameworks ..read more

Is parliamentary democracy broken? Are the current problems over the handling of Brexit perhaps reflections of something much more problematic about democracy? How should parliamentary democracy operate, what should be the limits on executive power, and how should we regard the rise of populism and alienation from parliament?  I have been reading an old account of the sociological and psychological conditions for democracy that, I think, still offers much to consider about the contemporary political situation following the EU Referendum of 2016 ..read more

Is it time to reconsider the idea of 'function'? The criticisms levelled at what was taken to be functionalism during the 1970s and 1980s led to the virtual abandonment of any idea of explaining social processes in terms of their functions ..read more

Much of my research has concerned status and the dominant classes in relation to political power. One focus has been on the role of the House of Lords in Parliament ..read more

In an earlier post I announced Susie Scott’s project on narratives of nothing. One of the first outputs from this project has now appeared in the form of the book The Social Life of Nothing (Susie Scott, Routledge, 2019 ..read more

Space is an idea that seems obvious and familiar, but what does it mean to talk about 'social space'. In this post I look at a way of theorising space and social space in order to see how we actively produce the space in which we live ..read more