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Month: <span>July 2022</span>
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Month: July 2022

Research

When did capitalism stop being any good?

By Angus Bancroft 31st July 2022 5th August 2022 0

When the whole world has been opened to capital, there is nowhere to expand into. There are no more sources of cheap labour or raw materials, and no more ways to mechanise complex tasks. You can only expand inward, through every more fiendish financial engineering, engineered solutions to non-problems such …

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Teaching

Ontological problems, really explained this time

By Angus Bancroft 30th July 2022 30th July 2022

Ontology (‘what is’) is a topic students often have difficulty grappling with in their work. It tends to end up being a set of buzzwords that people lay fealty to (interpretivist! Social constructionist!) rather than a set of thinking tools that should help you work through the research problem you …

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Teaching

Three and a half rules for applying for academic posts

By Angus Bancroft 27th July 2022 28th July 2022 0

As Olivia Rodrigo so wisely said ‘it’s brutal out there’. But we are never so brutal as with ourselves. Apply widely and be adaptable – you can fit into more posts and get something from them than you may realise. Recognise what they are looking for. Aim high and value …

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Teaching

Naming paragraphs as part of the writing process

By Angus Bancroft 27th July 2022 27th July 2022 0

In my quest to expose the writing process I have structured this paper using named paragraphs. Each paragraph has a title showing the purpose it performs as part of the overall paper structure. This should help putting the paper together as a coherent argument, showing how each bit adds to …

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Teaching

Docs and podcasts for my Illicit Markets course

By Angus Bancroft 26th July 2022 29th July 2022 0

Cultural accounts of illicit markets and criminal activities are the best way to develop a feel for them. Here are my recommendations: Podcasts Some of the most insightful sociology is done in economics, so Planet Money is my go to for understanding how the economy shapes our lives. Episodes on …

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Research

It is lucky police AI is crap. What if it worked?

By Angus Bancroft 25th July 2022 26th July 2022 0

I want to engage with a type of argument that is self-undermining. The months after Al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 birthed an immoral decision. The USA at the highest level began publicly legitimising torture as a means to an end in the War on Terror. As …

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Research

Social construction is an answer to a problem nobody has

By Angus Bancroft 25th July 2022 25th July 2022 0

One of the annoying things academic competition does is push us to develop elaborate ways of not quite saying what is staring us in the face. There is a tendency to produce theoretical solutions to problems that only exist because there is something we want to avoid saying, in this …

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Research

Crime’s social facts

By Angus Bancroft 23rd July 2022 25th July 2022

…really just one social fact Crime is behaviour that is intentional, measurable and directly harmful. The only reason to care about crime is that it gets in the way of the good life. Ignore anything about obeying the law for its own sake because otherwise our moral sphere will crumble. …

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Teaching

Does imposter syndrome feel better if we call it ‘drive’?

By Angus Bancroft 11th July 2022 24th July 2022

If you did not have imposter syndrome you would basically be living in your parents’ attic right now (apologies if you are in fact living there right now. I’m sure it’s nice). You cannot get rid of imposter syndrome but you can feel better about it and use some elements …

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Research

Poke-it-with-a-stick methodology

By Angus Bancroft 9th July 2022 10th July 2022

Never ask me ‘do you think this is fence electrified? Are these berries poisonous? Is this knife super-sharp?’ Or somesuch. I know only one path to knowledge and am the sort of person who likes to find out what something is by jabbing it with my finger/licking or eating it …

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Recent Posts

  • The post-user and the digital drug market
  • When did capitalism stop being any good?
  • Ontological problems, really explained this time
  • Three and a half rules for applying for academic posts
  • Naming paragraphs as part of the writing process

Recent posts

  • The post-user and the digital drug market
  • When did capitalism stop being any good?
  • Ontological problems, really explained this time
  • Three and a half rules for applying for academic posts
  • Naming paragraphs as part of the writing process

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