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Notes on the Social Life of Theory 1.2
In the preface to his Sociology of Philosophies, Randall Collins argues that intellectual networks hold the key to understanding ideas and their changes: “if one can understand the principles that...
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Notes for a Sociology of Thinking 1.3
While reading Randall Collins for my other project, I was suddenly struck by how relevant it is for the sociology of thinking. I must engage with this properly: Do we not have agency? it is a matter of...
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Notes on The Social Life of Theory 1.3
I approached this book with a certain degree of ambivalence, curious as to the hostility one of my favourite sociologists has seemingly provoked in many of its readers. As someone fascinated by the...
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Notes for a Sociology of Thinking 1.4
In a recent paper Tero Piiroinen argued that the intellectual axis of contemporary sociological theory has shifted from a concern with individualism and holism to what he terms dualism and...
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The role of metaphors in framing Data Science
This is very interesting. The author argues that “Data carpentry” is “not a single process but a thousand little skills and techniques”. He takes issue with the manner in which other ways of framing...
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The sociology of thinking and cognitive mechanisms
I listened to an interesting podcast earlier, in which the psychologist Eldar Shafir discusses the ‘tunnelling effect’ produced by scarcity. This is how Oliver Burkeman describes their argument:...
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Why does the iPhone matter to us?
My initial impressions of Bernard Stiegler were far from positive, largely ensuing from the sheer incomprehensibility of his writing. However this essay by Mark Featherstone (HT Emma Head) has reminded...
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Harmut Rosa on the logic of acceleration and the good life
His argument chimes with what I was trying to say here about the iPhone. Rosa argues that the prevailing concept of the good life in contemporary society is one which seeks to maximise our access to...
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Resonance and subjectivity on twitter
In four years of using Twitter regularly, I’ve often found others tweeting things that resonate with me and vice versa. In fact one could plausibly suggest that these experiences play an important role...
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