Some themes to apply to current times. Solid times One of the themes of mine is the return of various concepts, institutions and practices that were thought to be obsolete, or that some institutions tried to make so. The return of cash money or its nearest digital equivalent, the return …
One sign of societal decadence is shying away from clear explanations because they are too easy. So here we go: American universities do well because they have a lot of intellectual and practical resources. British universities perform round about what you would expect for a country of that size and …
I am sharing some plans for how I introduce topics to students. I would like other teachers to use them freely. From my course ‘Illicit Markets, Criminal Organizations’ Crime is fundamentally an instance of human insecurity. We need to know what systems create security and insecurity, how and for whom, …
Colleagues and myself have studied football fandom and alcohol in terms of what is called the carnivalesque.(Bandura et al. 2023). This is an idea that has been applied quite a bit in alcohol studies. A lot of theories of the carnival have relied on Bakhtin (1984) and the idea that …
Gentrification has three meanings. All refer to a kind of relentless nicening, the civilizing process at work. First a process whereby by affluent, middle classes take over a previously working class area or occupation, as in the gentrification of Leith or of football. Estate agents think it is a good …
One theme of mine is territorialization of the digital world, and the tight relationship between cyber criminals and their governments. Sometimes this is practical, as in the fact that Russian cybercriminals can operate freely as long as they do not target Russian /CIS citizens. Sometimes it is felt nationalism as …
Nothing is a silver bullet. Except when it is. I was reminded reading Nicholls et al (2022) report on drug consumption rooms of the critique of them as ‘not a silver bullet’. This term means a dependable solution to a otherwise tricky problem . It put me in mind of …
Nobody talks much about capillary power these days. Probably because we have too many lessons in actual power. This was a predominant concept for many decades in social theory. Derived from Michel Foucault who held that power was not held by individuals or organizations, but spread through society. Every act …
AI has become something of a bogeyman and it is not helpful to view the technology in this way. It is indeed often hyped up junk, as when Apple’s AI helpfully prioritizes spam email as ‘urgent’ for me. Yet as with any other technology it brings change and benefits and …
It helps a scammer if the victim thinks they would never be the kind of person who falls for scams. Successful fraud depends on the fraudster generating compliance by imposing their definition of the situation on their target. Erving Goffman (1952) outlines the process of ‘cooling the mark out’ – …
