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 …
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’ – …
Describe the problem. Follow the instructions, jeez. Learn a totally new syntax to describe the problem again. Okay, don’t follow those instructions, follow these. No, you have to do this totally different thing first. Yeah, it doesn’t work automatically. You have to change it from ‘not working mode’ to ‘working …
We want to be useful to society. But any attempt to show that or to have it guide us either destroys what we are, or turns us into technical servants or mouthpieces of other peoples’ ends. If you want to see how that turns out, enjoy listening to Christian Rock. …
