The recent death of Doris Day severed one of the last links with a Golden Age of Hollywood. Many tributes have been paid to a woman whose talent was rarely fully used in her screen roles. In the course of these obituaries and memorials, it is interesting to note the songs that are picked out… Read More »
…if one looks around a typical campus, it is striking how much sociology has abandoned to other fields. The consequence is that those fields have invented their own social sciences to compensate. Engineering has human factors, computer science has user experience, transport planning looks almost exclusively to behavioural economics. Students have the message that sociology… Read More »
…This post focusses mainly on conservative thinking, partly because it is increasingly difficult to identify when and where many students would meet a respectful presentation of this stream of ideas. How many social science departments actually teach a core component on Conservative Social Thought? Conservative social and political thought rests on three quite distinct foundations… Read More »
Diabetes is a significant global public health concern with wide ranging social and economic consequences. In the United Kingdom close to 4 million people live with diabetes, [1] with associated costs expected to reach £16.9 billion by 2035. [2] Older people with diabetes often deal with additional chronic conditions which together result in a weakened… Read More »
Robert Dingwall has been appointed as a social science member of the DHSC New and Emerging Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) NERVTAG is an Advisory Group to provide the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and, through the CMO, Ministers, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and other Government departments, with scientific risk assessment and mitigation… Read More »
Sociology in the UK ought to be in a healthy state given the vast range of skills it promises to confer on its graduates. Ideally, sociology graduates are well equipped to handle all contemporary forms of information….However, it is difficult to see how these qualities are developed by some UK sociology courses. The discipline risks… Read More »
…Under the current president, China has been moving towards the militant pole of Spencer’s continuum. Large numbers of people are employed in monitoring social media and maintaining the ‘Great Firewall’ to exclude and suppress knowledge and opinions that do not fit into the national leadership’s vision of a good society. This workforce is a direct,… Read More »
The 1976 BSA conference in Manchester was the year medical sociology was welcomed into the mainstream of UK sociology. Robert Dingwall was a member of the organizing committee, led by the much-missed Meg Stacey and including Margaret Reid and Christian Heath. At that time, selected papers were published in edited books – the strength of… Read More »
The UK media are engaged in a feverish debate about the implications of the judgement in the civil action over breach of privacy between Sir Cliff Richard, the BBC and South Yorkshire Police (SYP)…However, the case also raises interesting issues about ethical standards in interviewing, which have implications beyond journalism. Many aspects of the BBC’s… Read More »
I recently attended the Annual Lecture of the Academy of Social Sciences in London, which was given by Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England. The lecture was a fascinating journey through the problem of industrial productivity in the UK, as seen through the lens of economics. In the way of much economic… Read More »