Skip to content

Monthly Archives: February 2008

Reference Letters

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Being in my second year of teaching and having now taught five half-courses (at the third year level) and one full-course (at the second year level), I’ve started getting students asking for reference letters – employment, study abroad, law school and graduate school. As a general rule, I decline to write letters for graduate school [...]

Filed in Teaching | | Comments (10)

Randall Collins – Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Because it came up in a previous discussion this week and because the work looks genuinely interesting, the Chronicle of Higher Education has an interview with Randall Collins on his recent book Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory (Princeton UP, 2008). The first chapter to the book is available from Princeton UP. (If anyone from Princeton UP [...]

Filed in Sociology, State, Sovereignty & Violence | | Comments (0)

Apropos

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Apropos:
I believe that in Furet’s argument [the book in question is, in essence, an engagement with Furet's book on communism] I recognize the trace of a current of thought for which Leo Strauss’s work has been a source (or at least Strauss belongs to the current). This philosopher, who contributed so much to the restoration [...]

Filed in State, Sovereignty & Violence | | Comments (0)

Cylon Sociology

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Daniel Solove, Devan Desai and David Hoffman have begun posting what looks to be quite an interesting hour-long interview with David Eick and Ronald Moore, the creators of the “re-imagined” Battlestar Galactica, on legal systems, torture, politics and economy, and – for lack of a better term – Cylon sociology at Concurring Opinions.
Our interview is [...]

Filed in Sociology, State, Sovereignty & Violence | | Comments (0)

Liberation

Thursday, February 21, 2008

From Inside Higher Ed – “Going on the Offensive Against Animal ‘Liberationists’”
As a battleground for the animal liberation movement, the University of California at Los Angeles has weathered threats, intimidation and property damage directed against several of its researchers over the past few years. Today — two weeks after a firebomb went off at the [...]

Filed in Animals | | Comments (0)

Review: Foucault Beyond Foucault

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Todd May reviews Jeffrey T. Nealon’s Foucault Beyond Foucault (thanks Jeremy):
Nealon argues here that the explanation for the changes in power’s operation is its increasing efficiency through intensification.  Sovereign power was brutal but clumsy.  Social power was better, but was brought to greater efficiency by discipline, which, Nealon claims, acts not so much upon the [...]

Filed in Foucault | | Comments (4)

Either/Or

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

From “Conservatives Just Aren’t Into Academe, Study Finds: Divergent life choices may explain the dearth of right-wing scholars” recently posted to the Chronicle of Higher Education:
The Woessners were surprised to learn that while there had been a lot of debate about politics in the classroom, not much empirical research had been done. “There are questions [...]

Filed in Other | | Comments (9)

CFP: Carl Schmitt and the Event

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Papers are invited for a thematic issue on Carl Schmitt and the Event to appear in Telos: A Quarterly Journal of Politics, Philosophy, Critical Theory, Culture, and the Arts in 2009.
Guest-edited by Michael V. Marder (University of Toronto), the journal invites papers that explore the political, philosophical, and theological dimensions of the “event” in Carl [...]

Filed in CFPs, Conferences, Lectures and Journals | | Comments (0)

African-American Founders of Social Theory?

Friday, February 15, 2008

Is anyone aware of a survey article on the contributions of African-Americans to classical social theory comparable in scope to Lynn McDonald’s “Classical Social Theory With the Women Founders Included” [pdf]? I, and my second year social theory students, would be greatly obliged should anyone have any ideas.

Filed in Sociology, Teaching | | Comments (16)

Theory and Methods in Select Sociology Programs in Ontario

Thursday, February 7, 2008

An aside from an email exchange with Neil McLaughlin from a few weeks back dealing with some of the issues raised in this post.
Recently, the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University, where I teach the second year required course in “The Development of Social Theory,” has decided to split the second and third year courses [...]

Filed in Sociology | | Comments (7)