Network Recording the working lives of sociologists for over 40 years Issue 135, Summer 2020

Behind the mask: sociology during lockdown

Also in this issue: n A report into race and ethnicity in British sociology n Gary Younge talks about his move into academia n Events are held during annual conference week n BSA calls for a new deal for university funding

Contents 3

News Features Opinion

4 Male PhD graduates more 12 We run four pages on 34 Elisa Pieri tells us about likely to find permanent a report on race and the books that have jobs than female equivalents ethnicity in sociology influenced her work

5 Soas staff to be cut amid 16 A series of online events 36 We review books on the financial crisis during were held during the BSA violence, racial capitalism pandemic annual conference week and think tanks

7 Women sociology students 32 Our regular feature looks at 42 Author and columnist Gary ‘not more anxious about sociological news from Younge tells us about his quant methods’ than men around the world switch to academia

8 Sociologists set up new 38 A-level sociology is 10 45 Appreciations of Professors website to tell stories of years older than previously Morgan, Marsland, the Covid-19 pandemic thought, says our feature Veit-Wilson, Goudsblom

9 BSA calls for extra funding in a ‘new deal’ for higher Summer 20204 education funding Main feature: 10 Youth group event tackles the effects of Covid-19 on We take a look at research the world of sociology during the coronavirus lockdown 11 Emotions group runs its annual symposium on See page 18 Twitter this year graphic: adapted stock imagery

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Jason Arday Judith Mudd [email protected] Tel: 07964 023392 Aminu Musa Audu Tony Trueman John Bone (Chair) Network is published three times a year: Sarah Cant Spring Mark Doidge Note: where not stated, copyright Summer Autumn Stevi Jackson of photographs generally lies with the researchers featured in the Janice McLaughlin article, their institutions or the BSA Available online to members: Cathy Pope www.britsoc.co.uk Chrissie Rogers Louise Ryan Longer versions of some Network Network: articles can be seen at: Richard Waller ©2020 BSA Publications Ltd www.britsoc.co.uk/members-area/network Chris Yuill ISSN: 1742-1616 (login needed)

Disclaimer: Please note that the views expressed in Network and any enclosures or advertisements are not necessarily those of BSA Publications Limited or the British Sociological Association (BSA). While every care is taken to provide accurate information, neither the BSA, the Trustees, the Editors, nor the contributors undertake any liability for any error or omission. BSA Publications Ltd is a subsidiary of the British Sociological Association, registered in England and Wales, Company Number: 01245771. The British Sociological Association was founded in 1951. It is a Registered Charity (no. 1080235) and a Company Limited by Guarantee (no. 3890729). 4 Department news Male graduates more likely to find permanent jobs than female peers

University of Essex: Men with PhDs are more graduates in our sample were employed in likely to be in a permanent job than their either a fixed-term or a temporary contract female counterparts research shows, but this seven to nine years after earning their inequality disappears among social science degree, although the proportion of female graduates. graduates with a permanent position was Over four-fifths of men in work seven to significantly lower than that of male nine years after their doctorate had graduates. In aggregate terms, female permanent jobs, compared with three- doctoral graduates are significantly less likely quarters of women, says a study by sociologist to obtain a permanent position compared to Dr Nitzan Peri-Rotem. The others were their male peers. either in fixed-term or temporary roles. “Female doctoral graduates are also Dr Peri-Rotem used data from the UK concentrated in fields that offer relatively Doctoral Impact and Career Tracking Survey fewer employment opportunities outside from 2013 to explore the career trajectories academia, especially humanities, social of 466 female and 684 male doctoral sciences and life sciences, which means they students who had graduated up to nine years have more limited career options compared before. to their male peers, and these options may Six months after graduation, 51% of male be further restricted when seeking part-time graduates surveyed who were in work were or flexible work.” employed in a permanent position, More than half of the graduates were compared with 41% of female graduates. working in the higher education sector, This gap increased to 74% and 61% either in teaching (33%), research (13%), or Dr Nitzan Peri-Rotem respectively three years after graduation. other roles (6%). At seven to nine years after graduation, the than biological sciences graduates (76% and The study, published in the journal Social gender gap had slightly decreased, so that 61% for men and women respectively), Sciences, says there should be greater 82% of men and 75% of women who were in biomedical sciences (80% and 70%) and arts incentives through tax benefits or other work were in permanent employment at that and humanities graduates (79% and 74%), forms of state support to organisations in time. but lower than physical science and order to promote equal gender However, at seven to nine years after engineering graduates (85% and 84% for representation. graduation men and women social science men and women). It also recommends that universities graduates in work were equally likely to be in Dr Peri-Rotem, of the University of Exeter, should be encouraged to expand the supply a permanent job, at a rate of 82%, higher said: “As this study shows, one in five doctoral of permanent positions available. Youth justice book wins award ‘Feminism ignores Dr Alexandra Cox, of the University of women of colour’ Essex, has been given a prestigious award for her new book on the youth justice University of Sussex: A new book by system in America. Professor Alison Phipps argues that there are Trapped in a Vice, which explores the lives deep-rooted problems within mainstream of young people in New York’s justice feminism, which she says is dominated by system, won the Critical Criminology Book privileged white women. Award from the American Society of Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Criminology. Feminism says that the #MeToo movement, Dr Cox carried out three years of despite its beginnings as a project by the qualitative research inside five residential black feminist Tarana Burke, has ignored facilities in New York state, interviewing 39 marginalised voices and women of colour. young people and 70 staff. “Mainstream feminism is broken,” said “The system aims to treat or change Professor Phipps. “We saw that too clearly young people, but within a punitive context, when #MeToo reached the media and which is a fundamentally contradictory highlighted the voices and experiences of aim,” said Dr Cox, who worked in New York privileged – and mainly – white women. City’s justice system representing teenagers “We saw the spotlight resting on charged with crimes as a sentencing Hollywood actors and other high-profile advocate before moving into academia. professionals. While their experiences were Dr Alexandra Cox She said that the system should “stop often harrowing, the question remains: sending so many young people into custody more tax dollars on health and social care, where in the public debate were the voices of and start bolstering the opportunities that and less of that money on punishment”. the other women? The cleaners, the garment exist for them in their communities. She has given talks about the book at and agricultural workers, the teachers and Additionally, we can focus on the universities and in community-based nurses? Where, more than anything, were redistribution of resources so we spend settings. the voices of women of colour?”

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Department news 5 Soas staff to be cut because of ‘financial crisis’ during pandemic

A third or a half of staff posts in the Depart- and Universities UK, which represents 137 ment of Anthropology and Sociology at UK institutions, projected that the university Soas are likely to be cut, The Guardian sector as a whole would lose nearly £800 reports. million income in the year 2019–20. The newspaper says that the college is in The Times Higher magazine reports that the midst of a “financial crisis hastened by casualised staff in three departments at the coronavirus pandemic”. Goldsmiths have started a marking boycott Soas’s auditors have warned that the over plans not to extend nearly 500 fixed- impact of the virus outbreak on student term contracts in the wake of the recruitment meant “a material uncertainty coronavirus crisis, a move they say will exists that may cast significant doubt on the disproportionately affect BAME and female school’s ability to continue as a going academics at the institution. concern” over the next 12 months. Goldsmiths’ senior management team has The Guardian reports that senior said it is planning to let 472 casual contracts academics were ordered to identify staff expire this summer, along with 309 hourly- cuts, as Soas models a 50 per cent drop in paid associate lecturers and graduate new international students. trainee tutors. “Soas’s highly regarded international Graduates at Soas Casual staff in three departments – development department – ranked eighth anthropology, art, and media and culture – in the world – is said to be among the identifying as anthropologists. have begun a marking boycott in response hardest hit, while the anthropology and The story comes as US universities impose to the proposed cuts, demanding that sociology department is likely to lose a widespread hiring freeze. According to contracts be extended until October. between a third and a half of its academic Karen Kelsky, an academic career coach, A spokesman for Goldsmiths said the staff. more than 400 institutions stopped or institution was facing “new financial “The school’s internal forecasts show falls slowed down their recruiting by mid-May, pressures and difficult decisions due to the in tuition fee income ranging from among them the universities of Harvard, impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic”. £9 million to £18 million next year, with the Stanford and California. The University of The BSA and 48 other professional budget attempting to cover £14.9 million Alaska has said it will scrap batchelor’s associations across academia have written to losses based on 50 per cent less from degrees in sociology and other subjects to the government to express “profound international students and 15 per cent less save $4 million to meet a shortfall due to concern about the future of higher from domestic and EU students.” the virus. education in the UK.” See page nine for details The Antropology and Sociology In the UK, the University of Oxford • For a 12-page feature on the lockdown, Department has over 30 staff, most announced a recruitment freeze in April, see pages 18-29. Research to tackle job bias AI home study Lancaster University: A new project with reduces labour market inequalities by • University of Oxford: Dr Ekaterina Hertog almost £1 million in funding will tackle the tackling gender and ethnic biases in job has been awarded a £500,000 grant to study problem of gender and ethnic bias in the advertising, hiring and professional the impact of AI on people’s domestic lives. use of artificial intelligence for recruitment networking processes. The research will lead to realistic and human resource management. Professor Monideepa Tarafdar, of predictions about how smart technology will Bias – Responsible AI for Labour Market Lancaster University Management School, take over housework. Equality – will look at how artificial will lead the research, working with Dr Hertog will work with Professor intelligence can lead to unintentional bias sociologist Dr Yang Hu, and Dr Bran Nobuko Nagase of Ochanomizu University, in the processes of job advertising, hiring Knowles, from the School of Computing and they will lead research teams in the UK and professional networking, which are and Communications. and in Japan respectively. increasingly digitalised. Dr Hu said: “We want to understand these The teams will build on approaches Lancaster University will lead the three- biases and develop a tool that will mitigate developed to predict the future of year project, working alongside the against them. There is no way to remove all occupations in the paid labour market and University of Essex and the University of bias, and that would not be preferable – if apply these to unpaid domestic work. They Alberta. I’m hiring somebody, I want there to be will combine these with an analysis of The Bias researchers will work with some variations that produce the best economic and social factors, including industrial partners to understand gender candidate – but we want to reduce it where affordability of technology. and ethnic bias within human resource we can to ensure fairness and equality in “I expect AI to have a greater impact on processes. labour market processes.” some spheres of domestic life, like They will analyse data from hiring and The £987,000 funding is provided by the alleviating routine domestic labour, and less recruitment platforms and develop new Economic and Social Research Council, the in other spheres, particularly care work that tools and protocols to mitigate and address Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the involves social interactions,” Dr Hertog said. such bias. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research The grant is from UK Research and The project will then develop a protocol Council, and the Social Sciences and Innovation and the Japanese Science and for responsible and trustworthy AI that Humanities Research Council. Technology Agency.

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 6 Department news LSBU books tackle slavery, the family, US racism and Islam

LSBU: Books on the family, slavery, racism across the divide’. Dr Takhar also gave a in the US, and international intervention roundtable presentation at an event at the have been published recently. university on ‘The sociological understanding Dr Lisa Pine edited The Family in Modern of the securitisation of Islam’. Germany, an overview of how different Dr Charlotte Clements took part in an political systems have shaped modern online workshop organised by History Acts, concepts of the family, by analysing different a radical history forum, entitled ‘Recording family structures, gender roles, social class a crisis’. This looked at how those most and children’s socialisation. affected by Covid-19 are often unable to speak Dr Daniela Lai’s book, Socioeconomic Justice: out and what needs to be done about this. International Intervention and Transition in Dr Esmorie Miller co-chaired an online Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina, examines workshop in June on ‘Mobile methods and the link between justice and political doing historical criminology’ run by the economy, looking at international Historical Criminology Working Group of interventions and Bosnia’s post-war and post- the British Society of Criminology. socialist transformation. LSBU’s Race, Gender and Sexualities Dr Katie Donington’s The Bonds of Family: Research Group held an online and offline Slavery, Commerce and Culture in the British seminar series this year on issues including Atlantic World traces the activities of a single migration as a sustainability issue, and the extended family, the Hibberts, to explore body positive. This is an interdisciplinary how the system of slavery affected the social, Dr Lisa Pine group looking at the different experiences cultural, economic and political landscape of individuals and groups based on their of Britain during the 18th and 19th Dr Eroukhmanoff also gave a roundtable race, gender and sexual orientation. For centuries. presentation on ‘International relations and more information contact: Dr Takhar at A launch was held at LSBU for Dr Clara the securitisation of Islam’ at a university event. [email protected] or see the Twitter feed Eroukhmanoff’s The Securitisation of Islam: Other LSBU events include Dr Shaminder @LSBU_Gender Covert Racism and Affect in the United States Takhar speaking on ‘Student voice and the The Crime and Justice Research Group Post-9/11, a study of Islamophobia at a time BAME attainment gap’ at the third annual held a seminar on ‘Let’s talk about the when far-right extremism is rising in Europe conference of LSBU’s Education 4 Justice phone: contextualising coercive control’, and the US. Research Group, an event entitled ‘Education given by Dr Tirion Havard. Books on feminism and mobility Police expert up University of Strathclyde: A book on higher • A new study of eight countries has found for leader prize education and feminism by Dr Maddie that people born up to the mid-1950s have Breeze and Professor Yvette Taylor will be enjoyed increasing upward mobility while Dr Aminu Musa Audu has been nominated published in Palgrave’s Gender and later generations experienced a more for the prestigious 2020 Tällberg/Eliasson Education series. downward shift. Global Leadership Prize. Feminist Repetitions in Higher Education: Education and Intergenerational Social Mobility The prize is given annually to people from Interrupting Career Categories asserts the career in Europe and the United States found a striking any country and discipline who address the course as fundamental to understanding similarity in trends across all countries complexity of 21st-century global challenges. feminist educational experiences. It examines studied: the US, Sweden, Germany, France, Dr Audu, a trustee of the BSA, is the feminist methods of researcher reflexivity, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. author of Police Corruption and Community autoethnography and collective biography. The book, edited by Professor Richard Policing in Nigeria: A Sociological Case Study. His Dr Breeze and Professor Taylor have also Breen, of the University of Oxford, and research has been recognised by the published an article, ‘All imposters in the Walter Müller, of Mannheim University, Nigerian government as reference material university? Striking (out) claims on academic Germany, examines the role of education in for community policing policy and practice. Twitter’ in the journal Women’s Studies shaping rates and patterns of intergenerational An international jury will review the International Forum. This extends feminist social mobility during the 20th century. nominations in August and give $50,000 each debates on academic labour, exploring how It examines the factors that drove these to two, three or four winners. ambivalent insider/outsider academic shifts, revealing education as significant in The prize is named after the former ‘imposter’ positions are circulated on social promoting social openness. Swedish foreign minister Jan Eliasson, who media. More information on the book can be pursued world peace during his career. Professor Taylor and Dr Cristina Costa, of found at: https://tinyurl.com/yaxmdwjw He served the United Nations as President Durham University, worked with the designer • Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, of Lancaster of the General Assembly and as Deputy Samia Singh to produce ‘Estranged students: University, has been awarded £1.39 million Secretary-General. He is currently the (widening) participation postcards’, intended to research food insecurity in India, Chairman of the Stockholm International to support students and inform services for Ethiopia, Vietnam and Peru. She and her Peace Research Institute. them. team will document how food insecurity is The Tällberg Foundation promotes the More details are at: linked to poor health, education and work of leaders who make positive change in https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/72244 employment outcomes for adolescents. the world.

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Department news 7 Women students ‘not more anxious about quant methods’, says study

Men aged 25 and over are more likely to be this down by age, men under 25 were less anxious about learning quantitative likely to be anxious than women, and men methods than are women, new research over 25 were more likely to be. shows. The researchers found that men aged 25 A journal paper contradicts some and over were around 16 times more likely previous research which found that women to be anxious than younger men, and over students were more anxious about tackling six times more likely to be anxious than statistics and suggests that younger men may women. be too complacent about their level of Agedid not have a large effect on achievement. women’s anxiety about quant method: The paper, in the International Journal of women of all ages had about the same Social Research Methodology, is written by four likelihood of being anxious. University of Edinburgh sociologists, Dr “The findings here show that it is not Kevin Ralston, Professor John MacInnes, women but older men who are most likely Professor Vernon Gayle and Professor to report experiencing statistics anxiety,” the Graham Crow, and also Dr Victoria Gorton, researchers said. an early careers researcher. “Although the international literature The researchers analysed data from a tends to indicate that women dispropor- survey led by Professor Malcolm Williams in tionately experience statistics anxiety, the 2009 on 732 students at 34 universities in Dr Kevin Ralston findings here reveal that there is a group of England and Wales. An item included in the as the respondents’ level of maths unworried young men who may be likely to survey asked people to respond to the qualifications and how good they felt they need just as much pedagogical attention.” statement, ‘The idea of learning statistics were at maths so that the effects of age and “It is possible that a lack of anxiety in a makes me feel anxious’ with the options as gender could be studied in isolation. group of complacent young men, rather ‘agree’, ‘disagree’, and ‘not sure’. They found that overall men and women than excessive anxiety in women, The researchers carried out a logistic were equally likely to be anxious about characterises the gendering of findings regression analysis to adjust for factors such quant methods. However, when they broke previously reported.” Impact system ‘is flawed in multiple ways’ Kat Smith, Justyna Bandola, Nasar Meer, Ellen At the same time, there are plenty of experiences of ‘real impact’ (research Stewart and Richard Watermeyer write: researchers examining issues not currently in developed organically, often over long the spotlight but which may one day seem periods, which they felt had achieved Our new book, The Impact Agenda: crucial, as new challenges and crises emerge. meaningful impact and which was sometimes Controversies, Consequences and Challenges, Simply put, we have expertise in universities unexpected, and often collaborative) and the examines the controversies, consequences to help us deal with the new virus, partly artificial stories of ‘REF impact’ constructed and challenges of UK efforts to incentivise because these researchers were able to do to meet evaluation criteria. and measure research impact via REF 2021 some of that work in pre-Covid-19 times. So, Building on these debates, we end the and research funding. paradoxically, the current situation shows us book with the following eight recommend- It’s a strange time for a book to come out, just how crucial it is for universities to protect ations: reward impactful environments (not and we did think twice about promoting it. spaces for research without apparent individual achievements); value a wider range However, the Covid-19 pandemic is a startling immediate benefit. of activities (including public engagement); reminder of both how important (how This does not mean there cannot, or protect spaces and funding for critical and ‘impactful’) research can be, and also how should not, be any effort to encourage discovery work (without obvious impacts); vexed the relationship between research and academics to engage beyond their ‘ivory reject simplistic notions of ‘excellence’ which policy decisions often is. Our book argues towers’. Indeed, many of our research denigrate the local; weaken the link between that the UK’s current approach to measuring participants noted positive consequences of original research and impact to encourage and rewarding research impact is flawed in the UK’s recent concern with research knowledge synthesis and collaboration; multiple ways, and we end by making the case impact. Yet, our participants also raised consider the ethics of impact; defend and for an alternative approach that focuses on multiple concerns with the UK’s approach to promote academic rigour and autonomy; and engagement rather than impact. research impact, and it was clear that some create spaces in which valiant failures are One of the most consistent critiques that participants were concerned about impact celebrated and learned from. social scientists have made of the UK’s impact becoming an end in itself. Higher education is beginning to chart a agenda is that external events, over which One fairly consistent message was that – route through and beyond this exceptional academics have no control, massively increase particularly as we can’t know in advance what moment. Learning from the past, and or decrease the relevance (and therefore future challenges will be, or which new reimagining the future relationship between potential impact) of research. Virologists who discoveries will help – we need to ensure we research and policy, is more important than have studied coronaviruses, epidemiological protect exploratory research and research ever. and mathematical modellers and historical that is out of kilter with current policy • For more details of The Impact Agenda: analysts of previous pandemics have all trajectories. It was notable that our Controversies, Consequences and Challenges see: recently been in the media spotlight. interviewees differentiated their own https://tinyurl.com/yaju4vke

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 8 Department news Sociologists set up Decameron website to tell pandemic stories

University of Edinburgh: Sociologists have from the universities of Edinburgh, set up ‘Edinburgh Decameron’, a forum for Glasgow, Calabria and Malmö, and others stories written during, and about, the based in Cyprus, looks at the integration of pandemic. refugees in the researchers’ countries. It is The website takes its name from the led by Professor Nasar Meer. Decameron, written by Boccaccio in the Professor Meer was among 64 new Fellows 14th century, which comprises 100 tales told elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. by a group of young people sheltering in a The Fellows comprise leading thinkers from villa outside Florence to escape the plague. Scotland and around the world whose work Edinburgh Decameron’s stories include a has a significant impact on the nation. They piece by Professor Graham Crow on the join 1,600 existing fellows. siege of Leningrad during the second world Professor Meer was also appointed as a war, and a series of photos of the shopfronts commissioner to the RSE Post-Covid-19 of closed businesses, taken by Dr Mary Holmes. Futures Inquiry. More details are at The site is inviting contributions and can https://tinyurl.com/y84ls4uy be seen at: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/ Professor Jan Webb has helped the ed-decameron Infrastructure Commission for Scotland to In other Edinburgh news, the Citizens, write a report setting out a 30-year blueprint Nations and Migration Network for Scotland’s infrastructure. co-sponsored a conference held at Soas in The report, presented to the Scottish March entitled ‘Surveillance and repression Government, focuses on principles for of Muslim minorities: Xinjiang and developing a net zero carbon economy and Dr Mary Holmes beyond’. society and argues that urgent change in The event revealed how China’s extensive https://tinyurl.com/ycx9mcct investment practices is needed: repression of the Muslim population in the A series of reports and policy briefs on https://tinyurl.com/w3fujbw Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is refugees’ labour market participation has Dr Karen Gregory has been awarded a connected to the global ‘war on terror’ and been launched by the Governance and the Baille Gifford PhD studentship through the Islamophobia. The event, co-organised by Local Integration of Migrants and Europe’s Edinburgh Futures Institute, entitled ‘The Dr Sophia Woodman, attracted an audience Refugees (Glimer) project: university of data: ethical and social futures of more than 100, with 40 joining via https://tinyurl.com/yczwken9 of data-driven education’. It begins in the livestream. It can be viewed at: The project, which involves researchers autumn. Loughborough team wins teaching award Loughborough sociologists write: know sociology staff and their passions better. Loughborough, was established in response The sociology annual lecture, which was to the sector-wide degree awarding gap A team of sociologists at Loughborough inaugurated in 2011, is organised around between white and BAME students. University (Dr Katie Coveney, Dr Dave the first year module ‘Global, social and The project hired student researchers Elder-Vass, Dr Adrian Leguina, Dr Line cultural change’. who gained research experience and Nyhagen, Dr Paula Saukko, Dr Thomas The event involves students from all transferable skills through conducting focus Thurnell-Read and Dr Iris Wigger) has been programme years, staff and researchers in groups and writing up project findings. recognised by a University Team Award the university and members of the broader The project report led to significant which cites the team’s innovative pedagogy community. A running theme is to make changes in student-oriented practices across and research-led teaching practices. sense of the broad changes that have been Loughborough University, including pilot Sociology at Loughborough is taught reshaping the world over the past years and projects exploring curriculum review and within the School of Social Sciences and how they raise new questions for sociology. design, and the introduction of anonymous Humanities and many sociology modules The sociology team has introduced a coursework marking. It is available at: are available to students from degree poster presentation event for third-year https://tinyurl.com/ya8pq3m2 programmes across the school. dissertation students to showcase their Sociology team members have won In 2019, the BSc sociology degree research topics. This develops a valuable set teaching awards in recent years, including a programme achieved a 100% student of transferable skills and encourages Teaching Innovation Award (Dr Thurnell- satisfaction rating in the National Student students to communicate complex Read); the Student Union’s ‘Extra Mile’ Satisfaction Survey, first place in a ranking sociological ideas with clarity and award (Dr Thurnell-Read); the Vice- of 97 sociology programmes in the UK. confidence. Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in The team’s innovative teaching practices The event helps to build a sense of Learning and Teaching (Dr Nyhagen); the include the annual Festival of Sociology for community amongst the cohort and provides Student Union’s Teaching Award (Dr first-year students. feedback in an unthreatening environment. Wigger, nominee); the Vice-Chancellor’s The festival engages students in An innovative pedagogical research Award for Research-Informed Teaching (Dr understanding real-life current research, project led by Dr Nyhagen, entitled Line Nyhagen); and the Student Union’s helps them to make options choices in year ‘Experiences in the classroom and beyond: ‘Fantastic Feedback’ award (Dr Elder- two and three and enables them to get to the role of race and ethnicity’ at Vass).

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 BSA news 9 BSA calls for ‘new deal’ to boost funding for higher education

The BSA was one of 49 professional with our black and minority ethnic associations to call on the government to members and their wider communities. bring in a ‘new deal’ for higher education “These events remind us that it is our which increases spending to the OECD responsibility to look to our own average. organisation and to be proactive in making A letter to the Education Secretary Gavin changes for a better future. Williamson, Universities Minister, Michelle “We recognise that racism operates within Donelan and others, says that “Covid-19 has sociology and are committed to simultaneously highlighted the huge implementing the recommendations of our importance of university research to recently commissioned review on race and tackling the virus and its social and ethnicity in British sociology. See pages 12-15 economic implications as well as the for more on this unsustainability of the current funding “These are important steps but they are model for tertiary education. only a beginning. We pledge to work with “Currently, UK public spending on our members to build on these foundations, tertiary education amounts to only a quarter to take a lead in changing what we can and of university budgets, which is not only the join with others to support the wider social lowest among OECD countries but changes that must now take place.” comprises considerably less than half of the The BSA has also condemned the passing average spending among the OECD’s other of the National Security Bill for Hong Kong 34 countries. by the Chinese government and the arrest “It is therefore not surprising that nearly of pro-democracy leaders. 25 per cent of all UK universities were in In a statement the BSA President, deficit even before the pandemic and that Professor Susan Halford Professor Susan Halford, and BSA member now, due to a dramatic drop in projected Professor Sin Yi Cheung, condemned police income, almost all higher education The BSA’s Advisory Forum will discuss the violence against protestors. institutions in the country will face huge impact of Covid-19 on higher education, “While the world is still dealing with the obstacles to carry out their mission and sociology and BSA members in October. global coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese remain internationally competitive without Members are invited to write with their government has stepped up its actions government support. experiences and views to BSA Chief against opposition in Hong Kong in direct “We therefore call upon you to use the Executive Judith Mudd at violation of international human rights law,” current crisis as an opportunity to create a [email protected] said the statement. new deal for higher education. Rather than • The BSA has condemned the killing of “The BSA condemns police violence providing a one-time bailout, it is George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, against peaceful protesters, the arbitrary paramount that the UK and devolved which sparked protests across cities during detention of pro-democracy leaders in governments substantially increase public the spring and summer. Hong Kong and the National Security Bill spending on tertiary education in line with In a statement it said: “We oppose all passed by China’s National People’s the OECD average in order to ensure that racism and recognise that current events are Congress. our tertiary institutions remain at the shaped by specific forms of anti-black “This puts an end to the rule of law in forefront of global research, education and racism, particularly as these are embedded Hong Kong and to the civil rights we all innovation.” in policing practice. We stand in solidarity hold dear.” Two trustees begin at BSA New Fellows Two new trustees, Professor Cathy Pope and editor of Sociology. She is an elected member Sociologists were among the 51 leading UK Dr Jason Arday, have begun work at the BSA. of the Academy of Social Sciences Council. social scientists who were made Fellows of Cathy Pope is Professor of Medical Dr Arday, of Durham University, the Academy of Social Sciences in March. Sociology at the University of Southampton, researches race in relation to education, They included Professor Robert Hollands where she leads the Emergency and Urgent class, social justice and intersectionality, and Professor Janice McLaughlin, of Care research group. Her research and his books include Considering Racialised Newcastle University, Professor Jason examines healthcare and the organisation Contexts in Education (2019) and Cool Hughes, University of Leicester, Professor and delivery of health services. Britannia and Multi-Ethnic Britain: Uncorking Yvette Taylor, University of Strathclyde, and She has contributed to evaluations of the Champagne Supernova (2019). Professor Sue Yeandle, University of Sheffield. NHS treatment centres and acted as a He is an editorial board member for All have been elected on the basis of methodological expert to a review of plain Sociology journal and a lead editor on the their outstanding contributions to research paper packaging of tobacco. Palgrave Race and Education book series. and to the application of social science to Professor Pope serves on the editorial He is also a trustee of the Racial Justice policy, education, society and the economy. boards of Sociology of Health and Illness, Network and the Runnymede Trust, and a The Academy is composed of 1,100 Digital Health, and the Journal of Health Universities UK advisory board member on individual Fellows and 43 learned societies, Services Research and Policy and is a past racial harassment in higher education. representing nearly 90,000 social scientists.

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 10 Study group news Youth group event tackles the effects of Covid-19 on research

Anna Pilson, a PhD student at Durham University, writes about a recent Youth study group online event

To mark the absence of what would have been a brilliant opportunity for us to gather and meet at the BSA annual conference this week, the Youth study group held a virtual chat. Organised by group convenors Dr Ben Hanckel, Western Sydney University, Dr Karenza Moore, Salford University, Dr Caitlin Nunn, Manchester Centre for Youth Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University, and postgraduate reps Wendy Gill, Durham University, and Sophie Atherton, University of Manchester, the offer hope and provocations for framing We emphasised that we must consider the event provided an opportunity for our projects in the wider narrative of Covid emotional labour attached to the pandemic sociologists (and others) engaged in youth and its impact not only on academia, but for everyone. research to connect and to discuss the society. It is clear that the crisis has both Finally, Tracy Shildrick asked us to impact of Covid-19 on our work, ourselves, exposed and enhanced existing inter- and consider what Covid-19 is obfuscating – has and our participants. intra-generational inequality. It has Brexit become a ‘forgotten disaster’? Have After introductions we were split into embedded societal ‘othering’ along and marginalised communities become more breakout rooms where we were encouraged across racial, disability, age, gender, hidden? What will the ‘new austerity’ look to engender discussion based on, but not sexuality, health and socio-economic lines. like? Will the ‘missing middle’ be extended? limited to, the following prompts: the However, it has also brought the potential We also thought about how young people’s effects of the pandemic on research, the for opportunities for change, to challenge interaction with the cultural economy of the effects on young people, the effects on us longstanding inequalities, to rebuild our country is undermined. Once taken-for- and our wellbeing, and how can the Youth institutions, alter our attitudes and allow for granted activities in the transition process to study group support our community of divergent pathways. We were led to invert adulthood are now gone. Visits to pubs, youth researchers? our initial key quandary and question that, clubs and festivals, communal worship and My group shared their research topics if so much is at stake, is it ethical for us not social gatherings are (temporarily) and we quickly identified many thematic or to do research at the moment? unavailable – what impact will this have on practical similarities. Much of our discussion Moving back to the larger group, we felt conceptions of adulthood going forwards? centred on our ethical concerns. There that the meeting gave us as researchers a Will adulthood be destabilised? Or will we were pressing concerns expressed about the supportive space to air these concerns have instead an opportunity to promote wellbeing and safeguarding of our because we felt comfortable that they would more equitable pathways to adulthood? participants, given the pressures on be given credence and not brushed off as In such ambiguous and tentative times, it frontline charitable services and the closure imminently ‘fixable’. We talked about the was a relief to find ourselves in a space of safe spaces which provided – if not importance of academia in engaging with where we could acknowledge the hard havens – then certainly opportunities for grassroots community mobilisation efforts – questions, speculate about solutions and regular connection to care. We also how can we do research that is useful, as find prompts for reflection, as well as pondered the precarity of such well as ethical? An ethic of care must support and solidarity. organisations, going forward. We underpin everything we do. This includes This meeting showed us that social considered how ethical it is to move our self-care. The pandemic has undermined isolation doesn’t mean that we are socially projects online given the inequality of the progress and security of many within isolated. It was fantastic as a PGR to meet digital access, differing levels of digital higher education, especially those PhD others in similar positions and also to have literacy, and the viability of ensuring our students about to embark on, or in the mutually-beneficial conversations with spaces online are safe and inclusive to all. middle of, field work. With so much established academics. What was clear was Perhaps our central question was how uncertainty and with real support from that youth studies as a discipline consists of ethical is it to be conducting research with institutions and funding bodies often a uniquely passionate group of people who communities who have been (re)positioned feeling like it exists solely as lip service, we straddle the roles of activist and scholar, and as so vulnerable by Covid-19 that they are discussed how we negotiate the narratives of that this group is absolutely committed to literally in survival mode? business as usual? The normative supporting young people in navigating the While we were unable to fundamentally conceptions of productivity? The logistics of immediate and longer-term impacts of resolve these conundrums, we were able to balancing our roles within the new normal? Covid-19.

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Study group news 11 Emotions group runs Violence Against Women group Twitter symposium runs online events

The Emotions study group held its annual The Violence Against Women study group symposium this year on Twitter because of has run a series of online seminars during the pandemic lockdown. the lockdown, giving members a chance to Following the model set by other Twitter- present their work to a global audience and based conferences, presenters delivered for attendees to contribute to the develop- their papers as tweet threads, with the study ment of ideas. group posting content on behalf of In the first seminar, Dr Anna Bull, of the presenters without Twitter accounts. University of Portsmouth, talked about The event featured an early careers staff-student sexual violence. In other researcher plenary on racialised and events, Clare Walker, a domestic abuse gendered emotions in research by Dr consultant, discussed misogyny, parental Nadena Doharty, of the University of alienation and domestic abuse. Dr Louise Sheffield. The closing plenary, on emotions Livesey, of the University of in late modernity, was given by Dr Rebecca Gloucestershire, talked on using crime Olson, of the University of Queensland, who scripts when exploring child sexual was joined by Dr Roger Patulny, of the exploitation. University of Wollongong, one of her Susan Edwards, Professor of Law at the co-editors on a recent edited volume on the University of Buckingham, talked about same topic. why the rough sex defence in sexual Panels held at the event incorporated homicides must end, and Professor research on emotional and affective labour, Catherine Donovan, Durham University, Dr Roger Patulny mediated emotional relations, and emotions and Dr Rebecca Barnes, of the University of and social inequalities. participants about their work: Leicester, discussed domestic abuse in The symposium was interdisciplinary and https://bsaemotions.wordpress.com LGBT relations. international, drawing together work from The group’s Twitter account is @BSAemotions sociology, education studies, cultural and The event was organised by group media studies, psychology, and co-convenors Dr Lisa Kalayji, an interdisciplinary social sciences by scholars independent researcher, Dr Fiona in universities in the UK, Australia, Turkey, McQueen, of Edinburgh Napier University, Greece and Switzerland. and Dr Lisa Smyth, Queen’s University Copies of all presentations have been Belfast. They are all in their first year in the placed on the study group’s website for role after the study group’s founding viewing and comment. Presenters’ contact convenors, Professor Mary Holmes and Dr details are also on the website to enable Julie Brownlie, of the University of colleagues to contact symposium Edinburgh, stepped down last year. Book looks at injecting drugs The joint New Materialisms and Science and Technology Studies study groups Dr Anna Bull conference, scheduled for July, has been postponed because of current restrictions on More events have been announced, gatherings and will now be held next year. including a talk by Dr Christina Julios, of A new call for papers will be issued later Birkbeck, on female genital mutilation and this year for the event, entitled ‘Between STS social media activism. and the new materialisms: affinities and Also, a series of PhD student alliances in troubling times’. presentations will be given by: Amy In other news, study group members have Beddows, London Metropolitan University, been producing books recently. Injecting on victim blame and sexual violence; Ecem Bodies in More-than-Human Worlds, by Dr Fay Hasan, Durham University, on sex work and Dennis, of Goldsmiths, develops an intimate partner violence; and Valour alternative methodological approach to Horsley, on early themes from child sexual carrying out social scientific drugs research abuse and exploitation serious case reviews. Dr Chris Yuill and thinking about drug use. To attend these email [email protected] It shows the importance of developing Health: an Introduction, to be published by for the online link. more complex understandings of drugs and SAGE next year. Neo-materialism features in Videos from the events are available on drug-related effects. The book had a public chapters on theory, pandemics and the the study group’s BSA website: launch at Deptford Town Hall. environment, emphasising the relational https://tinyurl.com/ydxqr65j The group Dr Chris Yuill of Robert Gordon nature of society and nature, and a need to welcomes new members and has a Twitter University, is completing updates for the de-centre humans in our understanding of account (bsa_vaw) and Facebook page: fifth edition of his textbook The Sociology of the social. https://tinyurl.com/ycrowubo

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 12 Feature Race report: ‘it is up to us

A special research group has Durkheim completed its work on race and Weber ethnicity in sociology. In the words Marx of the BSA President, its report ‘highlights the tasks ahead of us if Du Bois we are to address the structural whiteness of higher education Race and ethnicity institutions and their teaching taught ‘merely curricula’. Network takes a look at its as an add on’ findings and recommendations...

ace and ethnicity is taught merely as an Radd-on or specialist module in UK universities, a report by a special team commissioned by the BSA has found. Attempts by black and minority ethnic and other sociology professors, around 10% made over the past few decades, there staff to change the situation can result in of all UK sociology professors. Black and remains a worrying number of areas where defensiveness and denial from colleagues, minority ethnic students are less likely to there has been little evidence of a the report says. attend prestigious universities, less likely to fundamental and deep-seated change in the Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Dr Stephen complete their programmes and less likely culture of the discipline when it comes to Ashe, Professor Claire Alexander and Dr to be awarded a first class or upper second- addressing questions about race and racism. Karis Campion analysed Higher Education class degree. “It is for these reasons that the British Statistics Agency data and sociology degree In a foreword to the report, the BSA Sociological Association has commissioned programmes information, and carried out President, Professor Susan Halford, said: this report on race and ethnicity in British an online survey completed by 188 “The report is essential for the future of sociology.” respondents, almost 10% of sociology staff. sociology. Their main conclusions include: “Whilst acknowledging the many examples • Only 10% of white staff and 20% of BME of excellent research, education and organ- Only 10% of white staff reported having received formal isational practice that challenge race and training about teaching race and ethnicity racism within our discipline, it highlights staff have training topics. the tasks ahead of us if we are to address the • Students are resistant to the teaching of structural whiteness of higher education he report found that 10% of white staff race and ethnicity, in part a consequence of institutions and their teaching curricula. Tand 20% of BME staff reported having institutional and departmental failures to “As sociologists, the authors have the received formal training related to the prepare them for this. methodological and critical resources of our teaching of race and ethnicity topics. • Almost a quarter of the undergraduate discipline to hand in producing this report. One respondent wrote: “I have done sociology degree programme overviews The evidence is clearly laid out and the some training which seems to me to be sampled made no explicit reference to the analysis draws on the sociology of race and more of a process whereby the university terms race, ethnicity or racism. racism to explain the findings and make can say ‘yes, we have done racial diversity • Race and ethnicity is often taught as an subsequent recommendations. training’ rather than actually address the add-on or specialist module, rather than a “Sociology has never been afraid to turn issues that may or may not arise. Race and fundamentally integrated part of the its critical gaze inwards and this is an urgent ethnicity training seem to me to be for the curriculum. example of that legacy. It is up to us now to purpose of covering the university • Sociologists wanting a more central role make these changes.” administration’s back, rather than to help for teaching on race and ethnicity were met Professor John Solomos, Chair of the those doing the teaching, or make things with defensiveness and a denial that change Heads and Professors of Sociology group, seem fairer to those being taught. In other was needed. who was one of the report’s advisors, wrote words it is paying lip service to the issue • The survey took place against a in his foreword: “What has become clear is rather than addressing it.” (White background of only 25 black, Asian, mixed that whatever the progress that has been respondent, Russell Group university).

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Feature 13 s to make these changes’

Russell Group: 83% of sociology students are white

ccording to the Higher Education AStatistics Agency (Hesa) 86% of academic sociology staff in 2018-2019 were white, and those categorised as black, Asian, mixed and ‘other’ accounted for 14%. The report notes that 48% of staff were Photos, clockwise from top left: white women and 38% were white men; 8% Professor Claire Alexander, Dr Remi were BME women and 6% BME men. Joseph-Salisbury and Dr Karis Campion, of Within the BME category, there were the University of Manchester. significant differences by ethnicity, with Indian women comprising 1.5% of staff, Other images in this feature are adapted while Bangladeshi women accounted for stock imagery. 0.1%. There were 230 white UK professors in The report is entitled ‘Race and ethnicity sociology in 2017-2018 and 25 black, Asian, in British sociology’ and can be read at: mixed and other sociology professors – https://tinyurl.com/y8cm4cjj 9.8% of the British sociology professoriate. Of the 25, four were black professors, 10 of Asian ethnicity, seven mixed and four ‘other’. Race modules are The author, journalist and academic In 2018, there were 35,475 undergraduate Professor Gary Younge said the sociology students, of whom 76% white and optional and report was “illuminating and 24% were BME. The researchers noted that devastating in equal measure. The BME students were a higher proportion delivered later report lays bare the paucity of black than among the general population – young voices both among sociology faculty BME people were 17% of their age cohort in the UK population. he research team harvested programme and in the curriculum while making “British young people from black and Toverviews from UK university websites, clear that addressing that under- minority ethnic backgrounds are entering collecting data on 56 sociology representation isn’t about appearing higher education at greater rates than ever undergraduate degree programmes, 62% of more diverse but being more before, in higher proportions than both the total, which had details of 1,506 relevant both to students and the their percentage of the population and modules. academy.” their white British counterparts.” They found that 34 (61%) offered one or The black African ethnic group was the more modules with race, ethnicity or racism largest of all the ethnic minority groups in its title but 13 (23%), made no explicit report says. studying sociology at undergraduate level, reference to the terms race, ethnicity or In the dataset, there were 10 brief accounting for 5.7% of all students, racism. descriptions outlining the content of followed by the mixed ethnic group at 5.1% Specialist race and ethnicity modules classical and contemporary theory modules, and the Pakistani ethnic group at 3.6%. tended to be delivered in years two, three referring to only a small number of social The proportion of BME students and four, and as optional rather than theorists, predominantly white and male. decreases in higher levels of study in the compulsory units – 24 modules with race Only one referred to a BME scholar – discipline: BME students comprise 20% of and ethnicity in the title were optional and W.E.B. Du Bois. postgraduate taught students and 17% of four were compulsory for undergraduate Only nine modules focused on non- postgraduate researchers. students. Western and non-European contexts, and BME students were under-represented “While a striking number of the 29 modules stated that Europe, the among Russell Group universities. Of all the undergraduate degree programme European Enlightenment or the West would sociology students studying within the overviews described their degree be the context of study. Russell Group institutions, 83% are white programmes and individual modules as “While many of the surveyed programmes and 17% are BME, compared with 74% and being ‘global’ in their focus, only 12 of the talked about ‘global’ sociology, in practice 26% in non-Russell Group institutions. 56 undergraduate degree programme the focus has been primarily on BME students were less likely to get a overviews (21%) referred to post-colonial Western/Northern contexts, which are seen good degree: 65% were awarded a first or and decolonial theory, and just 11% of the as the proper ‘place’ of sociology.” upper second in 2018/19 compared with 56 degree programme overviews made an 79% of white students. explicit reference to whiteness,” the Feature continues overleaf

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 14 Feature ‘Their voices have been s

From previous page

non-Russell Group). Another notes the “influence of the equality, diversity and inclusion committee and their push to decolonise the curriculum. This is also becoming a talking point in sociology in the UK more generally.” (white, non-Russell Group). The report says: “Inclusion itself can be a barrier to the effective implementation of race and ethnicity in the teaching of sociology in British universities. Tokenistic and superficial inclusion can create the impression that the work of including race and ethnicity has already been done. The inclusion of race and ethnicity in sociology should be a more holistic and fundamental endeavour than just the inclusion of sessions on ethnic inequalities, and there should be a clear understanding of what, where and how race and ethnicity appear in teaching.” sign up, the module doesn’t take place.” Other comments included: Teaching on race (white sociologist at a non-Russell Group “Teaching race and ethnicity and university). including important minority ethnic and is not central Another wrote: “When I first started black sociologists is more challenging teaching race and ethnicity, comments were because their voices have been neglected to curricula also sometimes made by colleagues to imply and silenced in the majority of departments that race and ethnicity modules didn’t offer and fields. This is a historical fact.” (white, oncerns were also raised about the fact the students quite as rigorous a non-Russell Group). Cthat race and ethnicity modules are teaching/learning experience as other “There is a historical erasure of the often optional rather than compulsory, the modules.” (BME sociologist, Russell Group). category of race – and the work of black report says, quoting some of the “The topic area is taught outside of the sociologists and other sociologists of colour respondents to the survey: main curriculum – it is seen and – in the discipline in Britain. This is partly “Mostly, race and ethnicity are taught as approached as an add-on in sociology. due to the emphasis on class as the primary standalone modules, as electives in the There is a clear lack of integration of race structuring principle of society (so gender second or third year, which places them at and ethnicity into the core reading lists with tends to get left out as well) and also due to risk in a market-led university that governs very little mention and acknowledgment of the whiteness of the discipline in general.” teaching by student interest. If no students BAME scholars in sociology.” (BME, (white, non-Russell Group).

be due to the goodwill, interest and capacity Lack of institutional of individual teachers. “In practice, this means that two teachers commitment could teach the same module in very different ways: one relegating race and he report notes that, “Many respondents ethnicity to the margins, and one bringing Tfelt that resistance at institutional levels race to the centre.” plays a deciding factor in the extent to The report also says that the “over- which race and ethnicity was taught. One whelming whiteness of sociology teaching key issue raised by respondents was that staff was seen to be a key factor in the there is no institutional, departmental or inadequate teaching of race and ethnicity”. course level mechanism for documenting As one respondent wrote: “Most the presence or absence of race and frequently race and ethnicity is taught by ethnicity. white teaching staff as they do not have “Indeed, many respondents – including enough BME lecturers or professors present some with over 20 years’ teaching in British universities.” (BME, non-Russell experience – said that they simply did not group). know the extent to which race and ethnicity Staff also noted a lack of resources for this Another wrote: “Staff in the department was (or was not) taught. work and a lack of commitment to the are also predominantly white and, “Several staff reported that they were not hiring of staff with expertise in the teaching therefore, the lack of relevant role models given institutional time and support to of race and ethnicity, including BME staff. within the department does influence the develop race and ethnicity teaching and that “Many of the examples of good practice way in which students respond to their this constitutes a tacit institutional barrier. highlighted by respondents often appear to teaching.” (white, non-Russell Group).

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Feature 15 ilenced in departments’

Racism experienced Decolonising the by 46% of staff curriculum

everal BME respondents reported he report notes: “Whilst the developing Sexperiencing racial microaggressions and Tpicture suggests that there is more work felt that racism was often subtle but to be done, respondents were particularly nonetheless impactful. positive about the impact of recent student “The impact of microaggressions often left movements, particularly calls to decolonise respondents feeling like the ‘lone voice’ who the curriculum and to decolonise education is ‘undermined’ and remains the ‘outsider’ met with resistance.” more broadly.” and the ‘other’. These microaggressions (eye Staff encountered resistance from students, One respondent noted: “The current rolling, for example) often came in the face as well. “The survey responses showed that moves towards decolonising the curriculum of their efforts to centre race and ethnicity in student racisms represent a significant barrier seems to be making some small difference their departments,” the report says. to the teaching of race and ethnicity in in how relevant the sociology of race is for A white respondent from a non-Russell British sociology. Almost half of BME UK universities but there is still a long way group university wrote: “I witness white staff participants (46%) said that they had to go.” (white, non-Russell Group). members denying institutional racism and experienced or witnessed racism or any other Another respondent wrote: “I think not being able to engage in discussing form of discrimination, harassment and people are more aware now that their whole strategies that would tackle the problem.” hostility when teaching race and ethnicity.” syllabus is not filled by ‘old white men’.” Another wrote: “Some colleagues became One respondent wrote: “A white male (white, non-Russell Group). defensive about the idea that they should student kicked back at the idea of Black The report notes: “Several respondents include POC [people of colour] on the History Month, complaining that there was argued that such movements have led to curriculum – including one incident of a no such thing as ‘white history month’. Some greater attentiveness to race and ethnicity senior member of staff being very rude to a white students have a tendency to refer to within their departments and it appears that junior colleague of colour and being minority ethnic groups as ‘them’ in a way the language of decolonisation – dismissive of the importance of the sociology which is really othering and draws on notwithstanding the potential superficiality of POC, particularly dismissing Du Bois and stereotypes, but hard to pin down and of its usage – has gained some degree of claiming that they don’t know how to teach therefore also really hard to challenge in the traction at institutional levels. it.” (white, Russell Group). classroom without alienating the student.” One respondent said of their university: The report notes: “Whilst colleagues (white, non-Russell Group). “Race is integrated into all social science might permit (and even support) the “Students are frequently determined to degree programmes and we are working on introduction of specialist race and ethnicity find alternative (racist!) explanations for decolonising the curriculum on a broader modules (or individual lectures), attempts institutional racism within the police, university level.” (BME, non-Russell Group). to embed scholars of colour or topics of including one student who proudly claimed ‘Race and ethnicity in British sociology’ can race and ethnicity into ‘core’ sociological ‘maybe black people just do commit more be read at: https://tinyurl.com/y8cm4cjj theory produce defensiveness and can be crime!’” (white, non-Russell Group).

Report’s authors set staff demographics and career progression. out their ideas The BSA should monitor BME representation among members and its officials to ensure that the association is mong the report’s recommendations representative of the discipline at all levels Aare that departments should ensure and ensure that BME colleagues are that BME staff are represented on staff represented on the editorial boards of BSA selection, shortlisting and recruitment journals. panels. It says that the BSA should establish The BSA should set up a Critical Anti- and support a network and mentoring Racist Pedagogy Forum to develop and scheme for early career BME academics. integrate a ‘decolonial’ approach to share best practice in teaching race and The report also recommends that sociology. Departments should support ethnicity, and run an annual teacher departments ensure that race and ethnicity BME students financially for postgraduate training workshop on race and ethnicity in is taught in the first year and across each of study and doctoral research programmes. sociology. It should launch an annual the following years, and that it is embedded The BSA and departments should collect postdoctoral fellowship to help develop a in compulsory and optional modules. Core data on student application and entry rates mentoring and training network for BME social theory and methods modules should to undergraduate study, on student staff. Heads of department should ensure include an inclusive range of key theorists progression to postgraduate study and that there is a focus on teaching race and and works, and more modules should be doctoral research, degree outcomes at ethnicity in the training provided to all run that examine the global South and undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and graduate teaching assistants.

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 16 Annual conference ‘You can’t keep a goo

his year’s BSA annual conference was Tcancelled because of the lockdown, but a This year’s annual conference reduced series of online events was held during the conference week instead. The BSA’s President, Professor Susan week featured prize Halford, introduced the events in a video address from her home. “It is my great pleasure to open the [online] 2020 annual presentations and online conference of the BSA, but it is also absolutely extraordinary to be doing it here at home on my own. events. Network takes a look... “I’ve been a member of BSA for almost 30 years and annual conferences are a really familiar benchmark in the annual cycle. It’s a chance to hear new ideas, to spend time just thinking and listening to things, to meet up with new friends, and generally to experience the buzz and liveliness of hundreds and hundreds of sociologists gathering together in one place to debate and argue, and to come away feeling invigorated by the whole experience. “This year is unlike any other. The cancellation is deeply disappointing to me, particularly as it’s the last year of my presidency, and I know it’s really disappointing to many of you who had planned to come and give talks and panels and to meet up with friends. Nonetheless, as we all know, you can’t keep a good sociologist down, and the conference is bouncing back This year the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize was herself, Anna takes us deep into the empirical with a series of activities that will be taking awarded to two book authors, Dr Anna Bull, of field and yet also marshals a sophisticated range place online and through our website over the University of Portsmouth (above left), and Dr of theoretical analyses that turns the book into the next few days. Owen Abbott, Universityof Manchester (right). what one of the panellists described as a “Sociology has a great deal to say about the Dr Bull won for her book, Class, Control, and ‘compelling page turner’, which is a great way to crisis, as we will hear, I’m sure, over the Classical Music (OUP), and Dr Abbott for his describe a sociology book.” coming days. But the crisis itself also has book, The Self, Relational Sociology, and Dr Abbott’s book “explores how morality is implications for the BSA and for other Morality in Practice(Palgrave Macmillan). done and how individuals come to engage in sociologists. Like other organisations, the In giving the prizes online, the BSA President, morality in the way that they do. It’s written BSA is facing a serious financial challenge but Professor Susan Halford, said: “I’m very sorry not with a remarkable lightness of touch and yet the trustees, the office and our study groups, to be able to make the award in person this year, manages somehow to be deeply thought‐ as well as our members, are all working really but at the same time I’m delighted to announce provoking page after page after page. I can hard to find constructive ways for dealing that we have not one but two winners – two honestly say that I started taking notes when I with this. books that demonstrate the very best of was reading this book and that it made me think “At a more individual level, the crisis is sociology but in such different parts of our about morality in technical practice – my own posing challenges for us as sociologists, discipline that it was impossible to split them area of research – even though I don’t think it is particularly in terms of workloads and in apart and put one above the other.” mentioned in the book at all.” terms of the politics of academic She said that Dr Bull’s book was “a highly Both authors have been interviewed by performance, and the pressures to keep original empirical exploration of the aesthetical members of the judges’ panel ‐ see: going in spite of it all. This is at a time when practices of middle class reproduction through es.britsoc.co.uk/philip‐abrams‐memorial‐prize‐ we have great anxieties to deal with and many classical music education. As a trained musician winners‐announcement of us have all sorts of additional caring responsibilities to take on that we are not appropriate at the present time.” Other events included a special webinar on used to doing in quite the same way. We are The events during the 2020 conference the pandemic See page 26 , a theory stream going to be organising something to look at week included the announcement of the plenary and a youth study group online how the BSA can support members and will winners of the Distinguished Service Award, meeting See page 10 . There were also open debate on this question at that time. the SAGE Prize for Innovation/Excellence mentoring sessions by senior academics on “I’m very much looking forward to next for Sociology journal, and the Philip Abrams various important topics. See the next page year, which will be our 70th anniversary Memorial Prize. The nominees for the SAGE for more details of the prizes and also: conference, where we will be discussing Work, Employment and Society journal were also https://es.britsoc.co.uk/bsa-annual- remaking the future – particularly announced. conference-week-activities

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Annual conference 17 od sociologist down’

Pioneering work on feminism and autobiography leads to award

his year’s Distinguished Service to British editor of its journal, Sociology. TSociology Award was given to Professor The BSA’s Vice-chair, Professor Louise Liz Stanley, of the University of Edinburgh. Ryan, said: “It is difficult to imagine anyone Professor Stanley researches sociological more worthy of this award than Professor Liz theory, in particular the work of Norbert Elias Stanley. and Dorothy Smith, historical sociology and “For over 40 years she has been at the archival research, feminist theory, and cutting edge of sociological research. From cultural sociology. her early work with Sue Wise in the late 1970s She began her career at the University of through to her most recent work on memory Manchester in 1977, staying for 30 years and commemoration in South Africa, Liz has before moving to Edinburgh 12 years ago. made invaluable contributions to our She also holds extraordinary professorial sociological toolkit. positions at the universities of Pretoria and “Her pioneering work on feminism, the Free State in South Africa. narratives, autobiography and archival Her books include Mourning Becomes… methods has pushed the boundaries of Post/Memory and the Concentration Camps of the sociological research. I am delighted that she South African War (2006), The World’s Great has won this prestigious award.” Question: Olive Schreiner’s South African Letters Professor Stanley said, “The BSA has been (2014), and Dorothy Smith, Feminist Sociology Professor Liz Stanley an important presence throughout my and Institutional Ethnography (2018). She is academic career and I’m thrilled and also the author of Georgie Porgie: Sexual role in the BSA, helping to set up the Sexual honoured to be given its Distinguished Harassment in Everyday Life, written with Sue Divisions and the Auto/Biography study Service Award for 2020, joining previous Wise (1987). groups. recipients whom I admire greatly. Thank you.” Professor Stanley has played an important She has also been a BSA trustee and an For an interview with Professor Stanley, see page 30 Model for post-lockdown research wins prize

n article that will serve as a model for conducting research post-lockdown has The shortlist for the SAGE Prize for illness in the labour process. A Innovation/Excellence for the BSA journalWork, Full details of the papers, with links to the won the SAGE Prize for Innovation/ Employment and Society has been announced. articles online, can be found at Excellence for the BSA journal, Sociology. The list has nine journal papers on various britsoc.co.uk/opportunities/sage‐prize‐for‐ ‘Community and conviviality? Informal subjects: a case study in an Italian bank; workers innovationexcellence social life in multicultural places’ was written doing dirty jobs; the moral economy of The prize winner will be announced later in by Professor Sarah Neal, of the University of becoming a seafarer; managing subcontracted the year. Sheffield, Dr Katy Bennett, University of services work; prisoners’ work for the private The nominees and prize winners for the other Leicester, and Professor Allan Cochrane and sector; women brewers; the non‐profit and BSA journals, Cultural Sociology and Sociological Professor Giles Mohan, Open University. voluntary sector; autonomy and algorithmic Research Online, will be announced later and The paper, chosen from six shortlisted control in the global gig economy; and mental placed on the website. articles for the prize, was published in the February 2019 issue and can be read online: https://tinyurl.com/y8o275zx groups and its study of the practice of Professor Neal said: “We are pleased that Professor Mark McCormack, an editorial leisure groups, from creative writing to the paper’s themes of interdependencies board member of Sociology and one of the gardening from coffee clubs to sports, is and shared practices in the context of urban judges, said: “This article makes important notably prescient in a post-Brexit multiculture and racialised difference were theoretical and empirical contributions to coronavirus crisis context. In the coming viewed as significant and as having a wider contemporary sociology through its years, the article will be a model for how to resonance. bringing together of discussions of conduct research into these questions, not “In the face of a global pandemic the conviviality and multiculturalism. least recognising the importance of importance of such quotidian processes “The focus on conviviality and community community conviviality and the social in deserves restating as we try to find new ways in ethnically diverse social and leisure testing times.” of living together.”

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 18 Coronavirus

How have sociologists coped with the lockdown? For the first part of our feature on the pandemic, Network asks four academics about life in these strange times...

should begin this by noting the gross world of digital learning without sufficient Iinequalities that Covid-19 has both support, while struggling with the various highlighted and exacerbated. While many inequalities dealt by Covid-19. workers are being forced to go into work via Of the students I teach, some have been crowded public transport (despite being told isolated on their own as they were unable to it’s a civic duty to avoid such transport), I return to their family’s home due to health have the privilege to be able to work from conditions, some have been coping with the home. loss of a family member, some have to work While many have underlying health from an overcrowded home with no problems or are close to someone with such identifiable workspace, and others have been health problems, and are consequently plunged into financial insecurity with family fearful of the threat of death, I know that if I members becoming unemployed. were to catch the virus, I would likely make a While many of my students seem to be healthy recovery. I know that if I were to catch coping well with the transition to online the virus and need hospitalisation, my learning, we – as teachers – have to symptoms wouldn’t be met with incredulity. I appreciate that this period is not a suitable live with my partner in a lovely home, so I learning environment for most of our have not felt suffocated during lockdown, nor students. Further, we cannot assume that any emotionally drained and physically tired by of our students are okay, and this requires constantly caring for children or other family fostering a further culture of care in members. I have enough financial security to academia which, at this present moment, know that we’ll have dinner on the table rarely stretches out to other colleagues, let every night and live in a secure environment alone our students. We are regularly told that with a loving partner. this is a time of – to use the government’s This isn’t to say that life over the past few favourite word – ‘unprecedented’ change months has been business as usual for me. but, when it comes to inequalities, the The cha One of my sisters works in a hospital, putting digitalisation of university teaching also her health at risk every time she goes to work. signifies that this is a period of gross Both of my parents are working as reproduction. pharmacists and, again, though they are in Of course, if there is a subject that has good health they live with my grandma, who something to say about social change, therefore can’t effectively be ‘shielded’ from reproduction and inequalities, it is sociology. sociolog the virus as one would hope in her old age. This is something that my students have been Both of my sisters have young babies so, of attentive to, and – in this period of despair – The sociology of crises is not my area of course, are also concerned about their it gives me hope that such students are using research, so I apologise if this appears to be health. Beyond my family, I miss seeing my their sociological imaginations to understand too simplistic. However, it appears that in friends, I miss seeing my colleagues, I miss the world. Students have already used the moments of crises there is at once the going beyond the parameter of my road and inequalities of Covid-19 to highlight processes opportunity to exacerbate and accelerate – on the theme of this post – I miss seeing my such as environmental racism, orientalism, already functioning inequalities, and also the students. sinophobia, economic marginalisation, opportunity to create new ways of collective I get a huge amount of joy from teaching dispossession, expropriation, pathologisation, life. my undergraduate and graduate students, and the government-enforced cultural On a daily basis, particularly around 5pm, I and I have now been teaching some of them repertoire of neoliberalism. see the topic of Covid-19 and inequalities for several years. It makes me incredibly sad Parallel to this, my colleagues inside and being dominated by natural scientists (as if that I am unlikely to see many of them again, outside of my institution have also brought there is something innately biological that is but I am more upset that so many students their sociological imaginations to our current making black and other racialised minorities across the country have been sent into the crisis. On the negative side, this includes dying at disproportionate rates), while discussions of what the digitalisation of politicians are smiling at the cameras only to teaching means for the future of academic – as per Malcom X’s comment on the work(ers) and what future lies ahead for our ‘northern wolf’ – show the public their graduate students looking for academic teeth. employment. On the positive side, we’ve If we are to avoid further catastrophe over fostered conversations around digital research the coming years (and beyond), there has to methods, online colloquia, digital book be a space for sociology in public and launches and seminars that are able to political discourse. My worry is that we’ll have incorporate voices from across the globe, to fight for this space ourselves. discussing how this could be part of a wider ‘green’ turn in sociology. – Dr Ali Meghji, University of Cambridge

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Coronavirus 19

allenges of being a gist during lockdown

or some of us, lockdown has brought they did in the much more extreme no surprise to people Fmore time to take stock, a precious thing circumstances of the siege of Leningrad. who know the history in busy lives. Contemplation can have a Communicating in new ways, one takes heart of the downside in the form of loneliness when it is from people’s resourcefulness and tolerance, marginalisation of solitary, however, so I’m grateful for everyday although it remains to be seen how the not African-American interaction within my household, with inconsiderable time spent on this particular communities in the neighbours at an appropriate physical learning curve will be logged when the next USA, captured in distance, and with colleagues, students and time allocation survey falls due. Time not Eric Lassiter and research participants virtually. spent travelling to and from the office has colleagues’ The Other No two days are the same, but routines been reassigned to time spent in the garden Side of Middletown, provide some semblance of order – starting I’m fortunate to have, where I had my first while the debate each working day by checking how many encounter with a hedgehog in a long while. about statues and monuments brought to people have completed my surveys into later News coverage is consumed avidly and has mind Sharon Macdonald’s insightful careers and retirement, and looking at emails reinforced confidence that my discipline has reflections on post-war Nuremberg in Difficult to see if any more people have agreed to be relevance within and beyond the academy. Heritage. Sociology’s breadth, including its interviewed. At the day’s end, books are Sociologists supply interesting and useful capacity to provide historical comparison, is a returned to shelves that are unusually orderly observations about all kinds of aspects of the key strength. (because they provide the backdrop to virtual pandemic such as the character of social – Professor Graham Crow, University of Edinburgh communications). Messages from colleagues networks and their bearing on patterns of are more often about problems solved than transmission, and I was pleased to contribute * Professor Crow appeared on The Guardian unsolved, giving reassurance that much is to a discussion on the roots of neighbour- series The Upside, dedicated to telling stories continuing more or less normally in terms of liness*. This did not require new research, of hope. He was part of a panel talking about outcomes. Function matters more than form. but rather the inter-pretation in current the ways the pandemic is reshaping Among arrangements involving virtual circumstances of things already known. communities around the UK and beyond. connectedness, PhD vivas still take place, as Likewise, George Floyd’s killing was sadly Feature continues overleaf

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 20 Coronavirus La maladie: its practical

From previous page wo weeks ago, the Académie Française Tpronounced that Covid-19 was feminine, not masculine, as most French ‘After all, when confined a people had assumed since the disease was officially named. According to the Immortel(le)s, as the elected members of nobody can hear you screa this ancient institution are called, its gender should derive not from ‘le virus’ but from ‘la maladie’ – the French for disease. The things you learn when confined at home. Let’s make a slight pause here – we didn’t ourselves quite comprehend, Being a confined academic has thrown academics are humans who have to manage about assessments, deadlines, modes of up an interesting set of challenges, to the their interactions with students. We are teaching, library access, etc, were met by management of everyday life, the care of encouraged to be empathetic, but not them with anxiety, but also hostility and the body and mind, the sense of time and, emotionally involved. Thankfully, threats. Not only was this anxiety catching more broadly, the blurring of boundaries. legislation, and some sociological it was also at times discouraging and Many academics are used to home working, imagination, has led to the creation of hurtful, as if we ourselves were inured to perhaps one or two days a week. But now structures within universities that address the emotional fallout of increasing we are working full time in our own homes. the need for diversity, accessibility and uncertainty. So I did a lot of firefighting, Some have an office. I don’t. I shift between inclusion, thus freeing us to deliver a trying to keep a respectful but firm my dining room (which does have a desk in syllabus which, hopefully, is infused with distance. In a second phase, when students a recess but it’s full of books, notes for these principles. Lockdown upended this were working on their assignments (I teach papers I might one day write, bills – all paid carefully managed edifice. I personally a research methods module to 200 – statements and dust) and my experienced this in two phases. Early in undergraduate students), the relationship conservatory, via the kitchen, where until lockdown, when universities were really changed quite substantially to emotional 10am French radio is on in the struggling to close properly and move to support. Suddenly I was entrusted with background. Lockdown has made it almost remote teaching, I saw my role shifting to personal information about life and study impossible to keep the public domain of panic management. Efforts to keep under lockdown from students who were work out of the home because they are now students updated, in a fluid situation that key workers, home-schooled their kids, had essentially the same space. This was brought to bear most spectacularly in our ability to maintain emotional distance from our students, especially as we ourselves responded in all sorts of subtle, sometimes unacknowledged or ‘I'm concerned about the unrecognised, ways to our own confinement. This virus is unseen in ’m still getting up at the same time as I and stress embedded into our interactions, more ways than we could ever imagine. Iwould normally on a working day, and as there are a lot more ‘unknowns’ facing For a period of six weeks, from the first trying to use what would have been ‘the us in the immediate future. intimations of the need for lockdown to commute’ to get some exercise in if I can. I’m very concerned about the impact this its very tentative implementation, its But my working patterns have changed and is having on students’ mental health and practical and emotional implications have are a lot more volatile than before. I find the loss of the social sense of support that hit us with almost exponential force. myself working very early in the morning, or comes with face to face teaching and late at night, and having breaks in the middle learning. We often make the mistake of of the day – so it’s a lot less structured than it assuming the ‘digital generation’ will be used to be. In that sense, there isn’t a ‘typical coping brilliantly with all the online day’ anymore. alternatives. I fear this isn’t always the case. Luckily, as I’m self-employed (I provide I think this pandemic and the lockdown professional media training alongside that accompanies it has shown us how academic work), I am somewhat used to holistic the role of the teacher truly is. In working from home and the challenges of one sense, we’re providing the exact same having variety in my work schedule week-to- support and information as before, with week. I’m also very privileged in that I don’t regard to the assessments, etc. But at the currently have caring responsibilities or same time, an awful lot of what we would serious health issues, which I know from usually provide is now missing from talking to colleagues can make the very students’ lives. The social interaction, the concept of working from home almost sense of familiarity, the more casual or laughably impossible. For me, the biggest emotionally supportive ‘chats’ (not to do challenge has been the emotional toll of the with work per se) aren’t necessarily pandemic; I notice there is a lot more anxiety happening in the way they were before.

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Coronavirus 21 and emotional effects

authentic way. I did, however, have to Caledonian University compose myself, letting either the irritation at home, or the anxiety subside before reading each Do you have email. I wondered if this was a novel form of emotional labour. I didn’t have to fake a news smile – after all, when confined at home, am or swear’ nobody can hear you scream or swear or to see you scowl. I also wanted to avoid falling into the share? ubiquitous clichés that institutions wanting florid Covid-19 symptoms or were self- to demonstrate their empathetic isolating, had missed their flights home and credentials have been reeling out ad Network is looking for news, struggled to rejoin their families and nauseam, whilst protecting myself and features, opinions and book others. The litany of human misery seemed sometimes voicing my distress to friends or relentless. colleagues. reviews. As the deadline for submission There is one boundary that I’ve managed approached, so did the emails which at to protect. At 4.30pm I switch off my work If you’re interested in having times pinged at the rate of three an hour in laptop and go out for my daily ration of your say, please contact Tony the middle of the day. I would wake up to at exercise. I avoid working at weekends least two requests for extensions. Knowing unless there is a deadline. This has been Trueman, at that some emails had for unknown reasons the only way to keep a hold of my time and [email protected] ended up in my junk mailbox added to the manage what one of my friends called the or on 07964 023392. stress and anxiety I began to feel in an coronacoaster that this crisis has thrown us almost pathological way. into. Now, looking forward to a summer of Overall I gave extensions to 25 per cent online teaching development, I predict a The next issue comes out in of this cohort but in the end only 8 per cent third phase of emotional disruption. December and the copy did not submit. I don’t know whether to deadline is early November. feel relieved or not. I answered each email in a personal and, as far as I could, – Professor Emmanuelle Tulle, Glasgow e impact on students’ mental health’

In that sense, I think ‘teachers’ are wisdom at a time of real uncertainty. I believe sociology (and academia more more important than ever to students, What do I miss the most about ordinary generally, and the world of work beyond but it isn’t necessarily ‘teaching’ (in the life? Most definitely the pub. It’s where all the that) will need to change in the future, as this narrow, subject-specific sense) that’s the greatest sociological conversations tend to pandemic has shown how unsustainable and priority anymore. I’m getting a lot of happen, in my experience. The pub or the unequal some of our models of working have questions from students about work, job coffee shop. become. Inequalities (whether these are applications, financial support and other I have found the best thing is not to force connected to caring responsibilities, or requests for general ‘advice’. It’s about myself to ‘cheer up’ at all, but to fully health issues, or many other factors we having someone to go to, who you trust embrace having a good cry, or an angry rant, understand to be connected to privilege and who can give you guidance and or a quick nap, or a big glass of wine, or a rather than merit) have been exacerbated by phone call to a friend, etc, when you feel you this crisis. need it is best. These aren’t normal Now is the time we need to urgently face circumstances, so we can’t pretend to feel up to the ugly impact of those inequalities, good if we don’t. It’s okay to not cope. (That and work to minimise them. If we can’t start being said, takeaway food and my Netflix prioritising people’s health and wellbeing subscription have been invaluable during after a global pandemic, when can we? these past few weeks.) Sociologists – more than anyone – under- My relationship with my other half has got stand this, and I hope more of us will take a lot more intense, as we are sharing a very proactive steps to push for the changes we so confined space together 24/7. Thankfully, we desperately need. are doing a good job of tolerating each other so far! I miss my family and friends a lot too, but we’re managing to book in lots of – Dr Holly Powell-Jones, City, University of video calls. London

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 22 Coronavirus

Robert Dingwall, who sits on a committee advising the government on its ‘You have to response to Covid-19, writes about his work fight to get his is not how I expected to spend 2020… TI had some significant surgery in 2019 and despite a good recovery, I decided it was time to phase out my writing commitments and enjoy my garden and my grandchildren. sociology’s Instead, Sars-Cov-2 hijacked my life. I ended up sitting in teleconferences trying to make sense of other people’s science and, where I could, speaking up for sociology. How did I fall into this? The story goes back to 1984, when, for reasons too long to voice heard recount, I had lunch in Denver with Tom Drabek, one of the founders of disaster studies in the USA. It was a fascinating couple of hours learning about the social dimensions of floods, hurricanes and tornadoes. In the –there is UK, we don’t have comparable disasters so this is not a big research field. However, I began following the US literature and occasionally dropping into relevant conference sessions. Many years later, I was a stress involved’ member of a hospital ethics committee, which considered the implications of a 1918- style influenza pandemic, and made a contribution from my acquaintance with the disasters literature. We were asked to re-run this session for a BBC Radio 4 programme. scanning committee created by the UK Office. The status of ‘government adviser’ This was heard by a civil servant who was health department to monitor new threats also created opportunities to engage with a recruiting people for a committee to consider from influenza and coronaviruses. The initial range of national and international media the ethical aspects of the pandemic membership had been drawn from organisations. management planning that was then being traditional biomedical disciplines but a What have I learned from these experiences? developed by the UK government. sociologist and a psychologist were added to First, there is a fair measure of stress involved. That committee (CEAPI – see end of this increase its scientific diversity. When If you want sociology’s voice to be heard, you article for an explanation of abbreviations) was Sars-Cov-2 appeared, Nervtag’s role expanded do have to fight for it. This means that active from 2005-07. It provided a unique into providing technical advice and occasionally you find strange allies – I would insight into the planning process. Unlike assessments for Sage [the Scientific Advisory never have expected to be name-checked by a most other countries, the UK did not see a Group for Emergencies]. Some Nervtag Mail reporter at a Downing Street briefing or pandemic solely as a public health challenge members joined Sage, although no-one by Lord Lamont on Radio 4. But it is a core but as a threat to the whole of society. Every seemed to think that a sociological principle for a scientific adviser – you talk to government department, not just health, was contribution would be helpful. I had, any journalist who wants to talk to you, in a required to consider its potential role and however, previously been appointed to Meag, non-partisan fashion. It also means tolerating produce papers that passed through CEAPI a partial successor to CEAPI, providing advice public abuse, especially on Twitter. for ethical assessment. The plans proved their on moral and ethical issues to the Chief My sociological training and career might value in the 2009 swine flu pandemic and Medical Officer. These roles led to invitations not fit an ESRC template, but it matched this were broadly endorsed by the subsequent to join ad hoc discussions with the Cabinet challenge. Quantitative skills are useful but review. I thought the social science of other disciplines do them better. Nor was my pandemics was an important and neglected If I have been able to career ever defined by my PhD topic. area and began collecting funding for a Qualitative research training teaches you concentration of PhD students within my ‘make any positive how to look, listen and dissect words and research centre at the University of Notting- meanings in meetings and documents. You ham. Unfortunately, a change of V-c in 2010 can hear what is not being said as much as meant that such centres were no longer contribution to what is. The sociology of organisations may favoured. I chose to leave full-time work in now have migrated into business schools but UK higher education and establish my own managing a national it tells us how institutions work. We consultancy practice. This did not, though, understand how people are constrained by end my interest in pandemics. I saw out the crisis, it is because of their roles to act in particular ways, regardless research students and maintained networks of evidence. We understand that rules cannot with key players in the biomedical field. a training in the skills be written unambiguously, without an In 2017, I had the opportunity to apply for of everyday inquiry etcetera clause. The Dominic Cummings saga appointment to Nervtag. This was a horizon- ’ is a field demonstration of ethno-methodology. Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Coronavirus 23

Science and Technology Studies has explored the problematic nature of scientific knowledge at length. Its interest in the use of metrics builds on 1960s and 1970s work on the social construction of data. This is fund- amental to marking the limits of modelling. Epistemological claims litter the landscape. A virologist does not necessarily know more about the physics of air flow than I do – but can invoke the generic authority of science rather than troubling to find out. Sociology is a discipline that understands the unintended consequences of well-meaning actions. Should city centres be rebuilt around retail, leisure and services or should we live, play and work mainly in neighbourhoods, as some argued in a ‘futures’ discussion? A sociologist can ask what a ‘neighbourhood’ society would mean for diversity if we spent all our time with people like ourselves? What would be the impact on innovation if we were not constantly encountering difference, challenge and the dynamic time of urban life – you may recognise Simmel’s arguments against the pastoral visions of his predecessors? If I have been able to make any positive contribution to managing a national crisis, it is precisely because of a training in the skills has included that masks, or other face decide against compulsory mask wearing. of everyday inquiry, an indifference to coverings, offered little or no benefit in See page 25 for more on this knowledge silos and an infinite curiosity interrupting community transmission of the Abbreviations: CEAPI – Committee on about the world. How do we foster those in Covid-19 virus outdoors. To the extent that Ethical Aspects of Pandemic Influenza; the next generation? there might be any benefit, it was so small Nervtag – New and Emerging Respiratory • Nervtag currently meets online twice a week that it was likely to be outweighed by negative Virus Threats Advisory Group; MEAG – Moral for one or two hours. Its advice to government effects. This persuaded the government to and Ethical Advisory Group

ociology and other social sciences will be goes on: “The pandemic, however, aside living, raising the potential for further Sjust as important as Stem and business from its immediate and tragic effects and widening of existing inequalities. As was the subjects in the post-lockdown future, the BSA organisational impact, has also brought to case in 2008, however, there will be a debate has said. the fore some other important issues for us between those who want to restore the status “It is highly likely that there will be a much as a discipline, both in terms of the quo – the current model of capitalism with greater need for both professional implications for our subject matter and the all of its attendant ills – and those who would sociologists and sociology graduates with the standing of the discipline within our advocate for something better, and sociology knowledge and skills to advise and help institutions. and the BSA should be at the centre of these manage the changes and other issues “For some time many of us have felt that debates.” affecting society, the economy and a variety sociology has been undervalued and The BSA had been directly affected by the of organisations at all levels,” it said in a underappreciated by UK governments, in lockdown. “As you’re doubtless aware, the statement. light of their tendency to favour Stem and BSA has been experiencing significant “As such, it is crucial that we continue to business disciplines over the social sciences, difficulties due to Covid-19, much in line vigorously fight our corner in terms of higher arts and humanities. This appears to be with what’s been happening in most education policy, nationally and within our informed by a rather impoverished view of organisations and charities across the country. institutions, particularly at a time when what universities are for, i.e. reducing their “Aside from the financial implications of budgets will be stretched and, critically, wider social, scientific and cultural purpose our adherence to social distancing and where government has hinted at differential to a narrow instrumental economic function, lockdown, the loss of our annual conference support for subject areas. The BSA will as advanced vocational training and research and other key events has left many of us continue to do this wherever the opportunity and development centres. feeling a profound sense of sadness in not presents itself. “This is an important time for sociology being able to get together with colleagues “Of course, Stem and business subjects will more broadly to promote our values of and, indeed, friends as usual at this time of continue to be important, but certainly no tolerance, fairness and social justice in year. This must be placed in context, given more crucial to the future, including in addition to our knowledge base, skills and the immensely more serious impact on those terms of employment prospects, than utility, in terms of ‘remaking the future’. On on the front lines of the NHS, social care sociology and other social sciences. The that point, it is clear that Covid-19 has and, much more acutely, who have very sadly reason for suggesting this is that a package of created a potentially important juncture lost loved ones to this dreadful illness. While significant social and economic changes, as from which competing visions of the ‘new the BSA will continue to operate as usual, as many commentators have argued, is already normal’ will emerge. far as is possible, we are entering a quieter taking place due to new technology, and “Without a significant change of direction, phase in our activities now.” these trends are liable to accelerate due to it may very well be the case that the As part of this, the BSA has furloughed the impact of the virus.” combination of factors described above will most of its staff over the late spring and early The statement, by BSA Chair, Dr John further reduce the capacity for many to summer, while keeping essential services Bone, and Chief Executive, Judith Mudd, sustain a decent and secure standard of going.

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 24 Coronavirus

Charting social distance: res

UK lags behind in test kits Sociology has already had an influence

University of Cambridge: A comprehensive on the current pandemic, by giving us the global dataset of companies working on Covid-19 testing, created by a team from the phrase ‘social distancing’, first coined by Department of Sociology, shows the UK has lagged behind. a sociologist, Karl Mannheim, in 1957, In April the database revealed that the UK had 13 firms working on producing though he used it to describe class and commercial testing kits, of which seven had successfully brought them to the market. wealth distinction rather than in its These figures compared with 22 firms in South Korea which had successfully brought current sense. But how else are kits to the market, 51 in the US, 84 in China and eight in Germany. The Asia Pacific region has 55% of all firms working on Covid- researchers throwing light on the 19 tests. Dr Stuart Hogarth (pictured below), who lockdown and its social consequences? lead the research, said the gap between Asia and the rest of the world “suggests that firms Network takes a look at the latest in the US and Europe could have responded more quickly when the pandemic began”. research in the US and UK... He points out that some of the countries with effective Covid-19 diagnostic testing are those where there is a strong relationship between the state and manufacturing sector. “A country like South Korea exemplifies a Women keep social distance 48% are food insecure pattern of industrialisation in which the state directs economic development,” said Dr There is no evidence that the US is pulling Nearly half of all respondents in some US Hogarth. together as a country during the pandemic, a states report food insecurity because of the “Our data suggests that strong leadership survey has found. pandemic, research by University of by the national government plays a role in Dr Beth Redbird leads a team of social Arkansas sociologists says. industry responsiveness, at least at the scientists at Northwestern University on the Results of an online survey of 10,368 extremes of leaders and laggards.” CoronaData US survey which asks questions adults found that people in southern and The analysis is available on a website set up such as if respondents feel isolated, whether mid-southern states felt more insecure by CancerScreen, a Cambridge research they think the pandemic is a hoax, and if about being able to afford food than the US project funded by the European Research they think the crisis is fostering a sense of average, while mid-western and north Council on the political economy of solidarity or community. The survey is eastern states typically reported less food diagnostic innovation – https://research. administered to 200 people every day. insecurity. sociology.cam.ac.uk/cancerscreen The team found that people did not feel On average, 38% of respondents more patriotic or closer to their fellow citizens. throughout the US reported moderate to They also found that African-Americans high levels of food insecurity. and Latinos were more likely to know Alabama had the highest level of food someone who is sick or has died from Covid-19, insecurity in the survey of individual and that women are engaging in more social respondents at 48%, with Arkansas on 47%, distancing behaviours than men, possibly and Kentucky on 44%. Iowa had the lowest, because they are caring for children and elder at 25%. parents. People living under stay-at-home The survey was funded by a $185,000 orders were experiencing more stress and rapid response grant from the National fighting with their partners. Science Foundation. A team of researchers at Durham regulations on physical isolation and social University in the UK is researching how distancing have affected people’s lives. We families have been coping with the hope the findings of the research will help lockdown. As part of the research, families health professionals and policy makers fill in an online questionnaire asking about support families in the future”. their income, caring responsibilities, access These findings will be published as to green spaces and emotional state. research blogs and academic papers. The team says that the responses from Those interested in taking part should families “will be of great value for contact the team at: understanding how the government [email protected]

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Coronavirus 25 search during the lockdown

Benefit system investigated Two‐metre distance A team of academics has been awarded £618,000 to investigate how the benefits rule was ‘conjured system is responding to the coronavirus out of nowhere’ pandemic. The project will examine whether people receiving benefits such as Universal Credit Professor Robert Dingwall, who sits on the get the income and employment support New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats they need. Advisory Group (Nervtag), has said that The project, which will be led by the advice to keep two metres apart while social University of Salford, working with the distancing was “conjured up out of University of Leeds, the LSE and the nowhere”. University of Kent, will include a survey of Professor Dingwall, said there had “never 8,000 new and current benefit claimants. been a scientific basis for two metres”, which In-depth interviews will be carried out was just a “rule of thumb”. with 80 people, who will share their Nervtag is an expert committee of the experiences over time, and case studies of Department of Health that feeds into the support providers in Leeds, Newham, Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, Salford and Thanet will be written. witnessed the biggest increase in claims for which is advising the cabinet on the This grant is funded by the Economic and unemployment benefits since records country’s coronavirus response. Social Research Council as part of UK began. Speaking on Radio 4, Professor Dingwall Research and Innovation’s rapid response “In the wake of Covid-19, there is an said: “We cannot sustain [physical distancing to Covid-19. urgent need for research into how benefit measures] without causing serious damage Dr Daniel Edmiston (pictured right), claimants are navigating a radically changed to society, to the economy and to the lecturer in sociology and social policy at social security system, particularly without physical and mental health of the Leeds, is leading part of the project. the face-to-face support that many would population. He said: “In the last two months, we have normally have access to.” “I think it will be much harder to get compliance with some of the measures that really do not have an evidence base. I mean, Lockdown racism studied Trump voters stay too close the two‐metre rule was conjured up out of nowhere. Two days after the US reported its first An analysis of nationwide cell phone “There is a certain amount of scientific death from Covid-19 but weeks before it location data has found that Trump voters evidence for a one‐metre distance which began an official lockdown, Dr Vivian Shaw, are less likely to practice social distancing comes out of indoor studies in clinical and a Harvard University sociologist, tweeted during the pandemic. experimental settings. that she was starting a new project Princeton sociologist Professor Patrick “There’s never been a scientific basis for documenting xenophobia and racism Sharkey found that US counties with larger two metres, it’s kind of a rule of thumb. But related to coronavirus and asked for examples. populations, with more educated residents, it’s not like there is a whole kind of rigorous The tweet garnered hundreds of retweets and with higher percentages of white and scientific literature that it is founded and likes, and Dr Shaw received many Hispanic residents tend to practice social upon.” anecdotes as a result, more than she could distancing more. He made his comments at a time when process. In one case, for example, an Asian The likelihood of practising social the UK government recommended people man was referred to as “coronavirus” on a distancing falls “with the percentage of the maintain a distance of two metres, though gay dating website. county voters who cast a ballot for Trump in this was changed in July to one metre. Dr Shaw brought seven researchers from 2016,” he said. Professor Dingwall has previously said he various universities to examine the virus’ Also, attitudes toward climate change had seen no evidence at Nervtag that there effect on Asian, Asian American and Pacific were one of the strongest and most robust was a major threat of coronavirus Islander communities, in what has become predictors of social distancing behaviour, he transmission outdoors. the AAPI Covid-19 project. found. He told The Telegraph: “If it was entirely The project focuses on six main areas: “Even after adjusting for all of these other down to me, I would be calling the dogs off. I labour and the economy, community-based characteristics, counties within the same don’t think it is appropriate to harass organisations, health, education, caregiving state where a greater share of residents do sunbathers. It is an indictment of the and family, and online space. not agree that global warming is happening political and scientific elite that they are not The project aims to illuminate some are substantially less likely to change their recognising that people living in flats and problems that do not receive much behaviour in response to Covid-19.” social housing do not have an alternative to attention, such as the closure of Chinese Using statistical methods, Professor restaurants, South Asians in the gig Sharkey also found that age, median going to parks.” economy losing business, and income and the unemployment rate were Read Professor Dingwall’s account of his undocumented Asian immigrants losing not important for predicting social work with Nervtag on pages 22 and 23. access to healthcare. distancing behaviour.

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 26 Coronavirus Sociology during and bey

The role of migrant The BSA held an online symposium and ethnic minority on the virus, with contributions health workers from five leading researchers who discussed the social aspects of the n her online address, Professor Bridget IAnderson said that she was wary of the idea pandemic, such as the role of that ‘we were all in it together’, because the pandemic had shown that some groups were more at risk than others. migrant workers, hospital The virus highlighted the inequality between citizens and non-citizens in Britain. architecture, underlying “Non-citizens account for a substantial share of employment in many sectors that are now demographic trends, the use of defined as essential,” said Professor Anderson, of the University of Bristol. “One of the things that I hope will stay with technology and the failure of the us is how many of those in low wage low sector jobs are doing incredibly valuable and West to react quickly enough. sustaining work. That’s work that’s disproportionately done by BME people and Network logs on to the event... also by migrants. This includes health services that are being put under even more strain. “It’s clear that BME people are experiencing sickness and death and hardships of lockdown and fear of economic survey has found that 41 African states have connections between different forms of disaster particularly sharply.” 2,000 ventilators in total. mobilities – capital, food, humans and animals.” She said the NHS was “powered by” “I am wary of where this solidaristic Global capitalism had pushed people into migrants. “Twenty-eight per cent of doctors nationalism is taking us,” she said. marginal land low subsistence and made food and 15 per cent of nurses are non- citizens, “Thinking nationally encourages us to a global trade “so the roots of the virus are and migrant nurses are paid 22 per cent less think that we are all in it together. This has not just in China but also in New York, in than British citizens. made international inequality quite difficult London, in Paris and many other global “Teasing out the way in which we are to see, hunkered down as we are in our cities. dependent on non-citizen labour and national spaces. “Times like this expose how politicised are thinking through the fact that we do not give “This is important to bear in mind at a time judgments of what’s reasonable and what’s equal rights to that labour is going to be a key when the virus is being used as an excuse for realistic, how nationalism normalises strict point.” further brutal crackdowns on migration. mobilities control and hyper surveillance, and Some measures had eased this inequality a “The UK is now partnering with Greece how the association of race and diseases little. “In the UK there has been a cost free and has got a special border force cutter distracts from powerful financial and visa extension for certain medical professions [ship] that is being deployed in the eastern industrial interests. It makes preventing for a year so that they can carry on saving our Mediterranean. human movement more imaginable than lives. The government is saying local “Migrants are being stopped even from planetary public health, which is where our authorities need to house people with no returning to their states of citizenship. Both energies should be devoted.” recourse to public funds, and now you can be India and the Philippines have refused to tested for Covid-19 and not have to pay if accept their citizens from Kuwait because you’re not a citizen.” they need some health reassurances. ‘We must explore But more needed to be done. “‘Let’s clap “But the fact is that in a globally integrated for carers’ is not only about [being provided economy, movement can’t simply be stopped. social implications’ with] PPE but [also being given] the rights of “The embededness of human movement in residence, and stable residence, not only for our economies is illustrated by the continuing he event was the first symposium the BSA doctors and nurses but also porters care demand for temporary migrants to harvest Thas held online. assistants and cleaners.” crops in spring and summer of 2020. We More than 300 people logged in during The inequality highlighted by the virus know abut the number of Romanian the event on 24 April and more viewed it on applied to different nation states: “We have migrants being brought to the UK because the BSA’s Vimeo page later. heard how the UK is suffering an acute movement is necessary to keep food on the Viewers were able to tweet and email ventilator shortage – Matt Hancock says table. questions for the panel. 12,000 in this country. “We need to think not just about Britain Professor Sue Scott, who chaired the “But a WHO [World Health Organization] and not just of migrants but about event, said: “We are delighted that so many

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Coronavirus 27 yond the Covid-19 crisis

‘Why was this virus underestimated in the West?’

r Ipek Demir said that the West had not Dtaken Covid seriously enough. “In March the UK government, when they did start talking about what to do about the coronavirus, downplayed the threat. The advice and techniques from China, South Korea and the World Health Organization were not followed, social distancing measures and contact tracing were not implemented, and minimising economic disruption was prioritised. “The Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, outlined that UK strategy was for herd immunity. “This herd immunity has come to be called epidemiological neo-liberalism, drawing on a comparison between neo-liberalist faith in unregulated markets and unregulated epidemics. “The UK’s strategy has changed since then and this has been presented as having shifted following a change in scientific evidence, nudged into action by the UK public. Photos, clockwise from top left: Bridget referring to the report from Imperial College “Perhaps it is some of these, but I would Anderson, Susan Halford, Ipek Demir, Nik in March but, in fact, as the Editor of The argue that there is more to the story. A Brown, Sue Scott and Danny Dorling Lancet highlighted, it wasn’t the science that serious examination of western scientific had changed but the UK government’s attitudes and their impact on misjudgements “Risks are judged as higher by women than strategy. should include an aspect of risk research.” men and racial differences among risk “Why was this virus underestimated in the Dr Demir, of the University of Leeds, said perception do exist. West? As of yesterday, South Korea only had research should examine how culture and “In the UK and US ethnic minorities have 237 deaths overall and never had to lockdown gender affected the perception of risk. been disproportionately affected and the like us. Asian countries did learn from Sars Women, for instance, were more likely to dynamic of race ethnicity and class have and were better prepared. judge a situation as more risky than men, who become even more visible. “Was it due to incompetence, British formed the majority among scientists “Risk perception is social and is closely exceptionalism, ideology, prioritising the involved in judgments about the pandemic. bound up by who is affected and whom we economy, or austerity measures that got in “We know from research that judgments of trust. In this case we see that the the way of pandemic planning? It’s risk are affected by gender, race, political misjudgements of certain groups are interesting that the Nudge Unit had to be views, trust and so on. evident.” Feature continues overleaf

wanted to participate in this event. The focus knowledge that we have are put to good use the move to open access publishing. It was on epidemiology and public health is, of in this challenging time, and this symposium held during what would have been the week course, crucial but it’s also important that we is one contribution to sharing ideas and of the annual conference. explore the social implications of the science, developing our thinking.” Judith Mudd, the BSA’s Chief Executive of government advice, and the pandemic She said the event had been “an absolutely said: “The BSA must also make savings and itself, now and its future. great session, it’s been every bit as good as I explore new ways to generate income to “There has been much talk in the media hoped it would be, with lots of people support the work that we do and, not least, about individual behavioural responses and, prefacing their questions with ‘that was our key mission to promote the wider project of course, the infamous nudge, but as sociol- great’, ‘really interesting’, and ‘thank you’.” that is sociology. We have been taking steps to ogists we have always known that we are not The event’s online setting also marks the do this, focusing on areas where we might just individuals but that it’s the social and start of the BSA’s strategy to lower its running make savings while protecting our key relational that shape our everyday routines costs in the wake of the cancellation of its functions. and practices and also possibilities for change. main conferences this year because of the “For example, we may need to replace “It’s important that the skills and pandemic, and a reduction in funding due to more face-to-face meetings with virtual ones.”

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 28 Coronavirus ‘Amid the terrible daily death toll there are calls for a different future’

From previous page ‘Post-virus changes were already on the cards’

he better world that many hope will Temerge after the pandemic subsides was already underway before the virus struck, Danny Dorling told the symposium. “The whole point of what I have been working on in the last six years is to say we were moving in a particular direction which appeared to be away from seeing inequality as good and away from not worrying about the environment. “There were lots of signs of things actually getting better – we don’t tend to look for those signs because, like little magnets, we are drawn to where there is a disaster, to what’s going wrong, to unfairness and injustice – but there were lots of signs of things getting better. “One way was that the infant mortality in the world fell by 10 per cent in a year – it will never fall as fast again, it can’t. “This isn’t a thesis of ‘we became richer and it became better’ – it’s that we started to care more as the world population became older, better educated and a little less vicious than we were before. “There will be fewer flights in future, the “Clearly the fact that the curves for France “Many of the things that people say we wealth of billionaires has fallen by at least a and the UK are so incredibly close that even should get out of Covid were possibly on the third and possibly by half as stocks and shares with our fairly spectacularly incompetent cards before then. have fallen, and the London housing market C-team cabinet, possibly the worst cabinet “The time will come when the pandemic is is simply not going to be there in any fashion ever, it didn’t make that much difference to over but these were long term trends as it was before. the actual trends that we have a less able occurring anyway and these trends will “Enormous amounts of wealth have government than other European countries continue.” evaporated, they simply don’t exist any more have had.” Professor Dorling, a social geographer at and that wealth is not going to come back in the University of Oxford, said that the the form it was because it relied on sentiment We will probably see current pandemic was not as deadly as that of – the idea that property was worth that much 1918/19 “and may not be as large the one in and that stocks and shares would rise in the ‘a deceleration in the 1968, which I suspect hardly any of you can future.” remember even if you were in it, but it killed There were other signs that were not so rise in the number of a million people worldwide.” encouraging, however. Rather than looking at absolute figures, “We will probably see a deceleration in the Professor Dorling has studied the rate of rise in the number of graduates worldwide – graduates, something change in various measures. as we work in universities this is something we He said that the rate of population change are slightly terrified about at the moment.” we are slightly was starting to fall and would level off during Professor Dorling said that the infection terrified about the lives of our grandchildren. rate in the UK was similar to that in France. ’ Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Coronavirus 29

are not going to row back on some of these prerogative of the elite. Who has the assets ‘We need to changes.” to shape the future is a question of Professor Halford, President of the BSA, privilege, inequality and social justice. empower debate’ said that there were “many different kinds Nowhere is this more obvious than in the of futures being assembled here”, including field of technology where unreflective and global ed-tech vendors “building coalitions iniquitous assumptions are often coded into rofessor Susan Halford said that the with governments to turbocharge their the creation or implementation of Ppandemic was bringing about socio- business and bring with it the individualised technological systems. technological changes that would be and neo-liberal model of education that is “But whilst this door is open, whilst things permanent. hard wired into those online education that seem possible seemed to be impossible, “Amidst the truly terrible daily death toll systems. how might socio-technological innovations and amid the endless revelations of systemic “If you start to look at the use of AI data be done differently toward remaking digital failures and inequalities as this pandemic is analytics in the provision of education, both futures? working its way around the globe, there are in the classroom and online, there are some “In order for this to be meaningful, growing calls for a different future,” she really serious concerns about pedagogic futures cannot become top down from said. thinking embedded in those technologies industry, government or the academy alone. “What part will digital technologies play and how that might override some of the We need inclusive and participatory in this? The wholesale shift to education really hard- won thinking about different approaches that stretch way beyond the online that’s happened before our eyes is ways of learning. There are some oppor- standard mechanism for public engagement really remarkable, and that’s before we get tunities and also some really profound with science. We need to empower to the spectacle of giant tech companies challenges.” meaningful public debate and dialogue offering to share their carefully guarded In contrast, “civic organisations from local about socio technical futures in the proprietary data for free with governments to global are being called together. Civic making.” There needed to be for tracking contagion, and driving, as they groups, technology businesses and NGOs – interdisciplinary collaboration across social would argue, some of the most successful committed to ethical technology, to data sciences and alliances with engineers and mitigation strategies around the world. justice, to responsible innovation – have technologists, she said. “But the changes we are seeing so far are been absolutely invigorated in the current not largely technical – yes, there has been crisis, calling out the iniquitous implications some rapid work around extending network of data sharing, calling out the capabilities and some new apps have been organisational surveillance and keeping There are some developed. these issues in the centre of public debate. ‘ “But far more than any of this, it is the “One of the things that struck me in the really serious changing social, political and economic rapid acceleration in online education is the relations of technology that is getting us response from some of the disability activists concerns about through. group – suddenly the things they have been “Things that had seemed simply campaigned for 20 or 30 years and which pedagogic thinking impossible turn out to be possible. My they have been told are impossible have argument is that the socio-technical suddenly become possible. So there is a embedded in those transformations that we are witnessing now progressive aspect to it. technologies are already assembling potential futures. We “Future making has been almost entirely a ’ ‘Lower density more widely in society because of the virus. “‘But it was established that that embodied There would need to be a change to lower mutual support and social contact triggered density workplaces, the ability to open cross infection and epidemic infections, workplaces needed’ windows, wider corridors, contactless doors, infections increasingly resistant to antibiotics and a ‘rewilding’ of indoor environments. and becoming untreatable in many cases. he pandemic should bring about a “All of that brings back the space of the “So, over the last few decades, living with Tredesign of the high-density architecture body – it remains to be seen to what extent cystic fibrosis has increasingly come to of hospitals, Professor Nik Brown told the this emergency creates the possibility for depend upon a hygienic regime of spatial symposium. more liveable ways of life. and atmospheric segregation, with ritualised “Infectious disease calls for entirely new “I’ve undertaken experiments with etiquettes of social distancing and keen acuity forms of architecture, building design and [architectural student] participants about to infection risks carried in the air. spatial organisation,” he said. how they might go about designing hospitals “Segregation of patients has reduced “In the pre-antibiotic era, infections were along different principles premised upon transmission but now today, in the context of managed with careful attention to the access to fresh air and sunlight and gardens a global pandemic, this profound state of environment – the movement and circulation and reduced height. emergency once inhabited by the few has of fresh air and the benefits of sunlight. “I do think that’s going to happen in the now come to involve the entire world. So “But with the arrival of antibiotics the fresh context of antibiotic resistance and I do think there’s lots to learn from people who have air wards gave way to the high density, high- it’s going to happen in some way in the been there before. rise healthcare environment. Late 20th context of Covid.” “People we have worked with will often century hospitals have a very tight geometry, He said he had worked for several years describe how they hold their breath at points low ceilings and densely arranged wards. with hospital clinics treating people with of perceiving respiratory threat. I’ve also heard “The era ushered in by Covid-19 has cystic fibrosis, which causes virulent and of clinicians treating Covid-19 patients who dramatically reintroduced the space of the chronic lung infections. also hold their breath because they are anxious body, calling into question all those spatial, “Up to 20 years ago people with cystic about the effectiveness of their PPE kit. design and architectural principles.” fibrosis would have been encouraged to “But patients point out that you can’t always Professor Brown, of the University of York, spend lots of time together on hospital wards live in a bubble – life has to move on, life has said that this change in architecture applied and on holidays and in clubs. to be risky.”

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 30 Feature

Liz Stanley, who received this year’s Distinguished Service Award, talks ‘This pandemic about how to respond to life under lockdown is a chance to

ociology needs to change fundamentally Sin response to the coronavirus pandemic, Liz Stanley, the winner of this think about the year’s BSA Distinguished Service Award, said in an interview with Network. “I hope that there will be more UK sociology that responds in ways that aren’t just normal science – the ‘let’s get a fundamentals research grant’ approach,” she said. “This pandemic should be used as an opportunity to re-think some of the fundamentals of the sociological imagination and what we’re doing. In a sense, there’s not only no going back, but of sociological there’s going to be no simple ‘after’ either. “For example, what will teaching look like if a large contingent of students doesn’t turn up? The rush to put things online, I absolutely understand, but what is that going to do? Are we going to be ill- imagination’ provisioned versions of the Open University? Where would that leave the OU? And how will students build up networks of relationships when they’re sat in front of a computer away from the university where they’re registered? The channel is a series of informal later moving to Edinburgh 12 years ago. “We’ve got this kind of awful conversations between sociologists who are Her early background made her aware of ‘Garfinkelian breaching’ experiment going either presently or in the past associated racial, ethnic and class distinctions, as she is on. It should be grasped and looked at in with the University of Edinburgh. It can be part Roma on her father’s side. Although he detail, and some of the questions arising – seen at www.youtube.com/ lived a settled life, some of his relatives did very difficult and awkward questions – have watch?v=6QfWXtkGv94 not. “After the war my father’s brother went to be confronted and explored.” “It’s called The Armchair Sociologist, back to a travelling life. He married a Roma Her response has included setting up an because we’re all armchair sociologists, woman from France and they went back to online forum for sociological discussion armchair anthropologists, political travelling. called Edinburgh Decameron, (see page scientists, etcetera, because that’s all we can “So, I’m half Roma and working class and eight), and also a YouTube channel. “I’ve be at the moment. It’s about trying to think white, but not exactly white. I was the first in become more and more interested in trying ‘what does it mean?’ What, for example, my family to get a degree – and there is now to explore some of the fundamentals that does agency and autonomy mean when we one other person who subsequently did a are being challenged and changed by have so-called experts saying, ‘20 per cent of part-time Open University degree, but it’s events. That’s why I’ve started this YouTube the population have to be permanently still the two of us in this extended family channel, called The Armchair Sociologist.” designated as vulnerable, another 20 per network. cent have to be shielders, who also have to “I’m also a baby boomer and a glass three- be segregated, leaving 60 per cent who are quarters full person – I was fortunate to be seen to be invulnerable’? born at a point when schools were good, the I’m half Roma and “We sociologists need to look at the education system was expanding, higher ‘ assumptions built into claims around the education was expanding, and there were working class and coronavirus and how to handle it, and ask grants. If there hadn’t been a grant, none of some difficult questions about it.” my life subsequently would have happened. white, but not Questioning assumptions has been a So I was extremely fortunate in terms of fundament part of Professor Stanley’s when I was born.” exactly white. I was career, which took her from a working class Her interest in feminism, as well as home to degrees in philosophy, politics and questions of race and ethnicity, has guided the first in my family economics, and in sociology, and a social her research. She has taught abroad, researcher job in Milton Keynes. She started including South Africa, and has written and to get a degree her academic career at the University of edited books on Olive Schreiner, the South ’ Manchester in 1977, staying for 30 years, African author and anti-war campaigner, Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Feature 31

best remembered today for her novel The structural and public things Story of an African Farm. like employment, whereas Professor Stanley is currently running the we were much more Whites Writing Whiteness project, which interested in the everyday looks at South Africa from the 1770s to the and routine, the things that 1970s, studying letters written by ordinary are part of the fabric of life white people to see how a minority came to and that in lots of ways are dominate and to institutionalise a system of more soul- destroying exploitation and power over a large black because they’re more majority. constant than the big “I’ve remained very centrally involved in things that might erupt looking at the dynamics of race and racism, occasionally into people’s and its contradictions and ironies for the lives.” last 20, 25 years in South Africa. The book proved “Since the end of apartheid, some things popular. “It got pirated, have changed for the better, but a which I think is a pretty remarkable number of things for the worse. damn good reception. It It’s quite shocking when you meet black got published elsewhere people and they say, ‘I wish we still had the and in different languages, National Party government – at least people which we were very pleased had jobs, at least there wasn’t violence on about, because the point is the scale that we presently experience it, to get people to read it, not and there wasn’t corruption on the same to make money out of scale’. books. “A perception shared by many across the “Things that are rooted race division is that the process of in structural relationships transition, so-called, has not unfolded in the take enormous amounts of way that people anticipated and that there time to shift, and many are areas where the problems are huge. men who congratulate themselves about not “So the things that have most profoundly “South Africa is one of the most unequal being sexist, and not being this and not changed, certainly in Britain, aren’t the countries in the world in terms of the gap being that, still engage in behaviours that legislative aspects, although one welcomes between the very rich and the very poor. are recognisable from 40 years ago. Men in them, particularly the repeal of those bits of That has increased enormously since the positions of power being able to extract legislation that were targeting gay men. But 1994 elections [that marked the end of sexual services, that still happens, and one the more profound changes have been just apartheid]. So sociologists need to have an should expect it to, because the structures the ordinariness of it.” eye to one-party government and how this of power haven’t been changed.” She was also involved in the BSA, setting could become entrenched. She was also deeply involved in the gay up the Sexual Divisions study group with “A lot of white academics in South Africa rights struggle from the early 1970s. “I’m a Sue Scott and others, and the have felt quite inhibited in speaking out on lesbian and a very political person, so I Auto/Biography study group with David this. Who wants to be one of the vociferous became involved politically via the Morgan and Michael Erben, which is still white people who go on about the ANC Campaign for Homosexual Equality and active. She has also been a BSA trustee and being corrupt and a disaster? So they’re in various other activities as soon as there were an editor of its journal, Sociology. quite a vulnerable situation, including signs of meetings. As she looks back over the changes to because they also had an investment in “The Gay Liberation Front was in the higher education during her career, she can helping to produce the end of apartheid.” process of being formed, so I became find some ladders among the many snakes. In giving her the Distinguished Service involved. The atmosphere was exciting, She believes that the RAE and REF have at Award, the BSA said that “for over 40 years, energising, wonderful. least meant that women with a good journal she has been at the cutting edge of “What has changed since then is that output were recognised by their sociological research”. A look back over her being gay has for many people – I don’t departments. list of publications, which includes over a just mean for gay people, I mean for “In terms of the fortunes of women in dozen books, confirms this. One of these many people – become ordinary. Their academia, the RAE and the REF, until was written with Sue Wise in 1987, a book mothers, their uncles, their sisters, their recently, have been a great leveller and so whose title rings with contemporary grandchildren, turn out to be gay. we see the rise of the women. It’s something relevance: Georgie Porgie: Sexual Harassment in that’s very noticeable. Everyday Life. “The question is: how to balance research “It was written in a time of naming the and teaching, and how not to prioritise one things that damagingly impinged on Men who congratulate to the exclusion of others when university women’s lives, women of all races and ‘ managers are beating you to do both, as it colours,” she said. themselves about not were? “What was unusual was that we were “Being an academic and a relatively junior looking at the everyday and routine aspects being sexist still colleague now is a very different and, it of sexual harassment: the slighting remarks, would seem, a more anxiety-producing the failure to pick up conversation points, engage in behaviours experience than it was for people of my the so-called flattering remarks that turned generation.” into expressions of violence if you weren’t that are recognisable interested. “So the difference of that book was that from 40 years ago • Edinburgh Decameron: other people were looking at much more ’ https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/ed-decameron Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 32 International news All around the worl

Network takes a look at sociology beyond our shores

Sociology left in second place Castells made Minister

Sociology is losing the race to be the most The sociologist Manuel Castells has left-leaning discipline in US universities, been appointed Minister of latest research shows. Universities in Spain. Although 27 sociology professors are He is part of a coalition government registered Democrats for every one led by Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party registered as a Republican, that still wasn’t Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez. enough to head the field of partisanship, a Professor Castells will steer what Mr study by two Brooklyn College researchers Sanchez has called a “new national found. contract for the university,” which will Instead the top slot was occupied by include representatives of the national anthropologists, with 42 Democratic government, parliament, regional registered professors for every one governments, student representatives, Republican. business associations, trade unions and Sociology’s second place is hotly civil society at large. Professor Manuel Castells contested, unexpectedly, by English Professor Castells, a leading scholar professors, who scored a ratio of 26.8 to 1. of how information and media technology affects human lives and societies, said: “While The most balanced discipline was my true joy is to teach, research and work with my students, sometimes, as I have in the economics, with a ratio of 3:1. Overall past, I hear an ethical call that compels me to serve for the benefit of humankind – be it in among all professors, the ratio was around Spain, in the United States, in Europe and in the world at large. I look forward to returning 8:1, according to the study, by Professor to my academic life after making a contribution to public service.” Mitchell Langbert and Professor Sean Stevens. The researchers sampled the political Peterson tweet is real McCoy Korean professor suspended registrations of 12,372 US university professors and found that 48% are Left-leaning sociologists are not just found in A sociology professor at South Korea’s registered Democrats and 6% are registered the US, of course See left-hand column. In Yonsei University has been suspended from Republicans. Canada Professor Ted McCoy gave some work for one month for allegedly making As the authors note in their study, the frank advice to his students: don’t cite Jordan disparaging remarks about Korean sexual Democratic Party advantage in the general Peterson if you want to pass my class. slavery victims. population is only about 1.1 to 1, with 29% The University of Calgary sociologist, Ryu Seok-choon has refused to accept the of Americans identifying as Democrats and whose speciality is the history of prisons and disciplinary decision, says the Yonhap news 26% identifying as Republicans. punishment, tweeted that “I heard it agency. “There is little hope of balanced or rumoured students will fail my class if they As reported in the last issue of Network, objective discussions in fields like cite Jordan Peterson and I’d like to clarify Professor Ryu was criticised after allegedly economics and industrial relations, much that this is absolutely correct”. calling the Korean sexual slavery victims less sociology, history and gender studies, if The tweet, sent out in response to online “prostitutes” during a lecture and denying all the professors are left-wing and queries about his grading practices, has since they were forced by the Japanese to work in Democratic,” said Professor Langbert, a self- been deleted after it was picked up by military brothels during the second world war. described libertarian. student newspapers. “Japan is not the direct assailant [of According to the researchers’ statistics, Professor McCoy’s Twitter profile is also enslaved ‘comfort’ women], and the women the greatest disparity in partisanship is now marked private, and it’s not clear were involved in “some sort of prostitution,” among college professors in the north east, whether the Peterson tweet was serious, or he is reported as saying. which favoured Democrats by a 15:1 ratio. joking, or if he had been ordered by the He said to a female student who Partisanship was also highest among women university to remove it. challenged him, “If you are curious, why professors, who registered as Democrats by Asked if Professor McCoy’s department or don’t you try?” a 16:1 ratio, compared to men, who only administrators had talked to him about the Ryu later issued a statement vowing to favoured Democrats by a ratio of 6:1. tweet, a spokesperson told The Fix website fight the disciplinary action by appealing to The study also considered political that he had “limited information at this the Appeals Commission for Educators or donations by professors. Of the 12,372 time”. the administrative court. professors the researchers studied, only 22 Professor Peterson is the popular The professor is also under investigation donated exclusively to the Republican party, Canadian psychologist and self-help guru by prosecutors after a civic group filed a while 2,081 did so to the Democrats. known for his reactionary views. complaint against him on charges of libel.

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 International news 33

Links to online articles about these topics can be found at ld... www.britsoc.co.uk/members-area/network

Happiness not a warm gun

Gun owners in the US don’t sleep better or feel happier than non-gun owners, according to new research. Two studies by University of Arizona sociologist Terrence Hill found no evidence to back up gun owners’ claims that their guns make them feel safe. One study, published in the journal SSM – Population Health, analysed 27 years of survey data and found that while gun owners were happier than non-owners, this was because they were more likely to be married and not because of their guns. The other study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, based on four years of survey data, showed no difference in the level of sleep disturbance between gun owners and non-gun owners. “Gun owners will often tell you that guns help them to feel safe, secure and protected,” said Dr Hill. “They will also tell you that guns empower them and make them feel independent and strong. “If guns do make people feel safe, secure and protected, if they are empowering, if they are contributing to feelings of pleasure, then they should promote happiness, but we don’t find any evidence of that. That calls into question whether or not these are real feelings that gun owners have or are they just Peace negotiator dies, 78 No review bias against women part of the culture of owning a gun?” There was one sub-group of gun owners The Guatemalan sociologist Héctor Rosada There is no evidence of systematic biases that did show greater happiness – people Granados has died aged 78. against women during the peer review of who identified as Democrats. One possible As well as having a distinguished journal submissions, a new study by a explanation for the difference could be that academic career, he was an important sociologist says. Democrats and Republicans may own guns negotiator in the peace process that ended Manuscripts authored by women and men for different reasons, Dr Hill said. 36 years of civil war in Guatemala in 1996. are treated similarly during review, says the “Some people use guns to enhance a He was also one of the key witnesses in study of more than 760,000 reviews of nearly recreational lifestyle – for activities like target the genocide trial that took place against 350,000 papers from 145 academic journals. shooting – and this might promote the former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt in The study, posted on the preprint server happiness because it enhances a lifestyle,” he 2013, which ended with his conviction, later SocArXiv in March, also found that said. “Gun owners who identify as more annulled by the Constitutional Court. manuscripts with a higher proportion of liberal or democratic may be more likely to Professor Granados was as an expert women authors were more likely to be use guns for that reason as opposed to witness in trials against high-ranking accepted by biomedical, physical, and emphasising self-defence. There is previous military officers of the 1970s and 1980s. health sciences journals. research that shows Democrats are less likely Despite his liberal tendency, he gained “This does not mean that bias against than Republicans to own a gun for the respect of the democratic sectors of the women does not exist in academia or in protection.” army, to the point of becoming the civilian publications,” says study leader Professor When he compared sleep disturbance in with the greatest knowledge of its internal Flaminio Squazzoni, of the University of gun owners and non-gun owners who lived in structure. Milan. dangerous neighbourhoods, he again saw no Luis Linares, analyst at the Association for One shortcoming of the study, he notes, is difference. Research and Social Studies, said that his that it doesn’t evaluate whether women “We found that gun ownership was no greatest legacy related to the peace process. submitted stronger papers in the first place. consolation for living in a dangerous “He was always very involved and left “We did not have data to help estimate neighbourhood in terms of the sleep valuable contributions in aspects of the total number of submissions per each disturbance outcome.” democratic security and conflict resolution.” scholar to all journals, which could help to Dr Hill says he hopes his continued Professor Granados’ book Soldiers in Power, understand if women anticipate potential research on guns and personal well-being the Military Project in Guatemala (1944-1990) bias by investing more in their manuscripts,” would encourage greater public conversation is one of his most emblematic works. Professor Squazzoni says. about the role of guns in society.

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 34 DiD

Elisa Pieri

Dr Elisa Pieri is a lecturer at the University of Manchester, where she conducts research on securing cities against global pandemics. Her work focuses on security, the governance of radical uncertainty, science and technology studies, and cities. She has featured widely in the media since the beginning of the pandemic, appearing on BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio Wales and other outlets.

Your first choice is The Plague by Albert and of returning home. Therefore, it could Camus – why this book? inspire anyone stranded on a desert island This is not a favourite book by him (in into thinking about escaping the island, which case I would pick The Stranger) but I travelling and successfully making the trip have chosen it for its topicality to my own back to other places. research of the last few years and to Your next choice is The Tea Lords by Hella current events. Why did you choose your third book, The S Haassee – why this book? My research has explored pandemic Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith? This is a complex novel about tea preparedness, focusing especially on the If I could, I would bring the entire set of plantations and Dutch settlers in Java at the social impacts and dimensions that fiction produced by Patricia Highsmith end of the 1800s all the way through to the emerge. As part of my work I have been with me on the island. She is by far my turn of the century. It is a fascinating looking at guidelines circulated by various favourite author – ever! But with only five account of the settler mentality and of national and international organisations, books to bring along, it is a hard choice. various colonial practices, and in certain lessons learned from previous outbreak Aside from the Ripley novels, which I love ways akin to the writing of Karen Blixen. It events and the experience of different and know too well to want to read again is also a piercing critique of the social cities around the world. This book, a work too soon, I’d probably bring the Glass Cell constraints of class, family ties and society, of fiction, unravels many of the dynamics or The Two Faces of January. of how these continue to follow the settlers that are set in an outbreak, and especially Both epitomise what I love about her away from Amsterdam and shape their new the slow and upsetting realisation that writing – the dashing settings and exotic life in Java, even in outposts that are something is deeply wrong and is taking travels, a climate of claustrophobic utterly isolated and in the midst of the hold of the city. It vividly tracks the fear suspense, the rapid nightmarish unfolding jungle. I came across this author by and fatigue that set in. It follows the of unpredictable events, the critique of serendipity in the library, as I was transformations of social practices as more social morality and a desire to show (in an preparing for the lockdown. Discovering and more disruptive measures are put in Albert Camus style) what happens to this book (based on Haasee’s own life and place. people who do not conform to social experiences of in these places) has been a norms...and yet what runs through all her real pleasure – maybe enhanced by the What made you choose your next selection novels is a deep love for these unruly and enormous sense of wanderlust that – The Odyssey by Homer? often shady characters who completely permeates her depiction of such distant This really ought to be my first choice as compel you to side with them, regardless of and lush locations, and the attention to it is the only book that I have read four their actions and their flaunting of detail in describing local practices, times and that I certainly intend to read a accepted morality and ethics. clothing and characters. few times more in the future. It is, of course, the perfect desert island read, since it contains absolutely everything – a myriad Dr Pieri’s choices: of stories, subplots and references to mythologies that resonate with so many 1. The Plague by Albert Camus (1947) Gallimard other works within Western art and 2. The Odyssey by Homer thought. It contains poetic narration and adventures that could keep anyone 3. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith (1964) Doubleday & Co endlessly entertained, fending off any boredom that could set in whilst stuck on a 4. The Tea Lords by Hella S Haassee (2010) Portobello Books desert island. Moreover, The Odyssey is a majestic tale of travel, excitement, nostalgia 5. Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1816) John Murray

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 DiD 35

Meet the PhD: Gillian Chu

My research looks at the ways Christians under Hong Kong’s non‐democratic regime handle civic engagement, particularly through recent non‐violent resistance, such as the Occupy Central and Umbrella Movements. Hong Kong has a small but strong Christian community that is engaged in exploring how their political practice can be reconciled with their Christian identity. I am interviewing 20 Hong Kong evangelical Christians from two field sites, covering a spectrum of political affiliations. This topic is important for those outside of Hong Kong because, in our current historical moment, with the rise of China and India and the decolonisation of European power, a new world order is forming. These changes raise questions about ‘universal’ ideals regarding citizenship, engagement, politics and religion. Since the majority of the world’s population adheres to some form of faith practice, religion will play a major role in determining events within this new political landscape. Your last choice is Kubla Khan by Samuel I was living and working in Hong Kong during the Occupy Central and Taylor Coleridge– what led you to this? Umbrella Movements and, as a Hong Kong Christian, I have a vested interest I would take a book of Coleridge’s in trying to reconcile what it means to be an ethnically Chinese person from poems with me. Poems can be read over Hong Kong with Christian convictions. and over, and you never tire of them. You I think the best part of the PhD is the ability to explore different approaches can read them aloud for their sound, so they are perfect material for a desert to understanding and learning. I definitely had not thought of things like island. Coleridge’s Kubla Khan could positivism and constructivism before my PhD, and it has enhanced the way I inspire an exploration of the inner parts of think things through in my daily life too. I used to be a lot more oblivious to the island and make it enchanted and magical. things happening around me, but now I am much more aware of the way His Rime of the Ancient Mariner, instead, people perceive and present ideas and how that is bounded by the way they would inspire a love of nature and all understand the world. I hope to enter a job with some research elements creatures in it (including sea monsters). after I complete my PhD. The tales of sailing in mysterious and Really crazy things have happened during my fieldwork! One of my field magical waters would also be very topical sites was burnt and vandalised, and Hong Kong went into shutdown mode to a desert island setting. because of the epidemic. However, my most memorable experience is my weekly writing session with my colleagues in a farmhouse. I enjoy the collegial Which luxury item would you like to take? aspect of it. It is a welcome change from the rest of my PhD work, such as My luxury of choice would be endless interviews and field observations, since it gives me a space to think and access to jazz and reggae music. Alternatively, if I have to pick a single reflect, and next to a cosy fireplace, no less! object, it would be sun lotion, for this had I found it very difficult to transition from a taught master’s programme to better be a very sunny desert island! the unstructured, self‐directed approach of doctoral‐level research. I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh and my master’s degree in Canada, so moving back to Scotland was a bit of a surprise for me, as well. I did not expect to enjoy living in St Andrews as much as I do, This book unravels many since I have always lived in large‐scale cities, but I really enjoy the quaint ‘ university‐town vibe, bumping into friends everywhere and having inspiring of the dynamics that set in conversations throughout the day. I have been taking lessons in horse riding (dressage and jumping) and during an outbreak, and clarinet since my master’s degree in Vancouver, and St Andrews is also a good place to continue these hobbies. I am by no means good at either – I just especially the slow and enjoy the process. St Andrews is a small town with very little nightlife, so it is a upsetting realisation that great place for developing cultural interests. ‘Christian perspectives of civic action under non-democratic something is deeply wrong governments based on church discussions in post-umbrella movement ’ Hong Kong’, University of St Andrews, 2018-2022

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 36 Reviews

Violence and Society

Larry Ray SAGE 2018 (second edition) 320 pages £26.99 pbk ISBN: 9781473907911 pbk

arry Ray endeavours to make sense of violence into the private sphere, are critiqued Lviolence in society in this wide-ranging through the work of Foucault. and well written introductory text, proposing Developing from these early chapters, Ray that violence is entrenched within our social explores the patterns of violence in the sites relations and the use the force has become a of private and public spaces, broadens legitimised, even normalised, aspect of life. discussion on the intersections of gender and However, violence is culturally, geographically hate crime and incorporates data and theory and historically specific and, therefore, to explain the strains of homicide and the conducted, experienced and performed to social conditions of genocide. The challenge Book different degrees between individuals. for Ray is to guide the reader towards a social This comprehensive text uses multi- meaning of violence while constantly disciplinary approaches to introduce theories acknowledging the heterogeneous forms that self-worth to motivate mobilisation. and origins of violence. By juxtaposing can manifest. Alternatively, seeing the world through a evolutionary psychology and biocriminology In tackling the multifarious characteristics lens of violence demonstrates how with the familiar theories of conflict, control, of violence, there are moments within this representations are ubiquitous and an ever- differential association, interactionist and text that hints towards themes of memory growing source for disagreement. Rhetoric subcultural, Ray crafts an early narrative of and perception. Guilt, humiliation and concerning the impact of video gaming, violence that is embedded in social and shame imaginatively form bridges between cinematic portrayals of good and evil is cultural relationships. Indeed, it is argued micro and macro sociological thought, as thoroughly explored. Indeed, it is through that the origins of violence are set within the they can act as triggers that are experienced these interpretations and narratives that the norms and structures of social order, by individuals, disconnect communities and, bigger picture of desensitisation, exploitation strengthened through values of hierarchy ultimately, affect societies. and subjectivity allows Ray to illustrate how despite clashing with the solidarity sought This revised edition includes new chapters consumption has been framed around the through entrainment and social organisation. on ‘Collective violence’, ‘Theories of sharp ‘shock’, while context and composition Cementing this foundation is an in-depth violence’ and ‘Violence and the visual’, and have faded out. discussion on Elias’ civilizing process, each is an indispensable contribution. This is a timely and well-researched book signalling the progression towards greater For example, collective violence is that invites greater discussion about violence empathy that is fostered through the characterised around ‘moral holidays’, in society. The only criticism would be the figurations, or interdependencies, between however, these are often breaks from structural limited space provided to social media and social relations during which the state has inequalities and an exclusion from consumerism how violence can be interpreted and monopolised violence. Increased pacification that may ignite feelings of humiliation or executed online. Nevertheless, it is an witnessed the rise of an intolerance towards shame. Using the examples of the Paris 2005 exploration that will challenge perspectives violent behaviour through developments in and London 2011 riots, Ray demonstrates and prompt difficult questions, ensuring that self-control and forethought. However, the how resistance is generated from the self this text is an invaluable inclusion for module negative effects of this process of socialisation, being more visible, from difference being guides and reference lists alike. such as shame, taboos and a retreat of more apparent, and from the realisation of n Kevin Judge, University of Stirling

s mistrust in expertise and politics has organisations, three of which are registered British Think Tanks After Agrown, and as the boundaries between charities. But this does not disclose all donors. them appear uncertain, this study of think The ASI is particularly secretive. One interviewee The 2008 Global tanks provides a timely exploration of their claimed this was, “to protect their privacy...we Financial Crisis work. Hernando’s focus is the response to the don’t want them intimidated” (p.117). 2008 economic crisis of four British think Hernando uses Bourdieu’s concept of tanks: the Adam Smith Institute (ASI), Policy hysteresis – when habitus leaves us unable to Marcos González Hernando Exchange, the New Economics Foundation, adapt to external change – as a core Palgrave Macmillan and the National Institute for Economic explanatory tool. This predicts that these 2019 Research. He examines their policy reports, organisations would hold more or less closely 324 pages media appearances, blogs, public events and to their thinking even when confronted with £65.99 pbk academic publications, and conducts his own potentially confounding external challenge. interviews with think tank members and Had the ‘hysteresis hypothesis’ simply been ISBN: 9783030203696 hbk former members. confirmed, this book would be much less Many think tanks, particularly the more interesting than it is, but Hernando notes two influential, form part of a largely concealed ways in which it faces challenges. One is that Sources mentioned in reviews can be seen at world of power and decision-making. Hernando think tanks show capacity for adaptation and www.britsoc.co.uk/members‐area/network reports financial information on each of the are not internally coherent in ways sometimes

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Reviews 37

Reviews of Rethinking Racial recent books Capitalism Gargi Bhattacharyya Rowman and Littlefield in social science 2018 207 pages and sociology £24.95 pbk ISBN: 9781783488858 pbk

populations, and to what purpose. As well as exploitation, the loss of confidence in the Robinson’s (1983) work on racial capitalism, ability of capitalism to incorporate the global Bhattacharyya draws on Sanyal’s (2007) population into wage labour, and the rise of postcolonial wasteland, Mbembe’s (2003) securitisation, bordering and migration as necropolitics, Mies’ (1986) feminist theory of central to the differentiation of populations social reproduction, and the Frankfurt along the lines of the ‘racial’. Her School’s work on capitalist dehumanisation. Masseyesque commitment to retaining the Bhattacharyya produces an account that particulars of the local in its relationship to ends encompasses how and why groups may be the global results in a flexible and differentiated in capitalist societies, with some sophisticated conceptualisation of racial attributed a lesser, or ‘racialised’, status; how capitalism, one that can account for the shifts, n picking up Rethinking Racial Capitalism, the labour of such populations may sustain fragmentations and evolutions in capitalist OI thought I had a commonsensical capitalism but be perceived as ‘non-work’; strategies of accumulation and dispossession understanding of what ‘racial capitalism’ why racialised populations, despite being on that sociologists from across the discipline will might be. As Bhattacharyya points out, “the the receiving end of capitalism’s worst find applicable to their own work. term ‘racial capitalism’ makes such sense to excesses, might still rush to be included in In her refusal to present the reader with a our raised-in-total-immersion-in-racism ears” capitalist modes of production. Her writing totalising theory of racial capitalism, (p.8). However, she is quick to dismantle any resists easy interpretation: it demands that Bhattacharyya constructs an account that is simplistic assumptions. From the introduction, her readers pay attention in order to compre- remarkably generous. Almost every entitled ‘Ten theses on racial capitalism’, hend the subtlety of her arguments, but the paragraph expands to include recommended Bhattacharyya cautions against seeing racial reward is an elucidating and complex inter- readings, and I repeatedly found myself capitalism as a conspiracy theory and to resist pretation of why racism persists under capitalism. straying to texts on topics such as idealised the idea that racism and capitalism are both Declining to produce a “metatheory to male bodies and Greco-Roman sculpture, inevitable and essential to one another. transfer between any and all locations” (p.3), decolonial theory, and the transmission of Instead, she asks the reader to approach the Bhattacharyya argues that racism, like historical trauma. This is in keeping with question as though racism were capitalism, is “uneven, shifting, fragmented”, Bhattacharyya’s purpose: she encourages the “...unexpected. Just try for an instance to be and “complex and evolving” (p.120). The reader to see her book as a jumping-off point, uncynical, to embrace naivety, most of all to differentiation of populations represents a as part of a broader project to “see more imagine a world that pre-dated racial logics in strategy for accumulation and for legitimising clearly the varieties of dehumanisation that order to imagine a world that will truly post- the dispossession, expulsion and exploitation can be mobilised in the name of capital” date such inhumanities. This is the starting of racialised groups, serving the interests of (p.107). A challenging and rewarding read, point of this book’s project”.(p.121) dominant elites that vary across time and Rethinking Racial Capitalism is a guide I will What follows from this starting point is a space. It is this principle that underlies keep returning to in my own attempts at challenging and beautifully written account Bhattacharyya’s exploration of contemporary clarity in thinking through the relationship of how the coincidental collision of racism elite preoccupations with climate crisis and between racism and capitalism. and capitalism serves to differentiate the finitude of resources available for n Saskia Papadakis, Royal Holloway

assumed. The other suggests think tanks may stance of the ASI towards quantitative easing, responsiveness to change, but Hernando respond to challenges to their expertise by brought in to inject liquidity into the quotes Madsen Pirie, co-founder and changing modes of public engagement to economy. Initially scorned as ‘printing President of the ASI, speaking in 2013: search for new audiences. Hernando observes money’, an interviewee explained their “Capitalism certainly faced a crisis in 2008, how, “the crisis spurred many of them to alter subsequent more positive view as a pragmatic but it is still with us...when the dust of crisis how they presented themselves and through shift: “economies that had implemented QE has settled, it will be a new version of which means”. (p.17). tend to be in a better shape today.” (p.133) capitalism that goes on to generate more Policy Exchange, closely identified with Offering a thoughtful and nuanced wealth and to expand the opportunities open David Cameron and the ‘modernising discussion, this book should stimulate greater to humankind.” (p.137) Tories’, offers an illustration. “Like Cameron, attention to the changing relationship After a decade of austerity, the Covid-19 they supported both the ‘Big Society’ between expert knowledge and policy pandemic and its eventual aftermath will programme and, after 2009-10, austerity. formulation. Mistrust in expertise, require more than policy readjustment. Producing public interventions in support of accompanied by declining confidence in the Expertise of different kinds will be required, both of these policy agendas required some institutions of modern democracy, creates an with a willingness to engage with social change of tack and image, which made clear urgent need to consider audiences and movements beyond political elites. that a vocation for political influence demands publics with whom researchers engage – and a degree of intellectual pliability” (p.221). how this is done. n Dr Mike Sheaff Another example comes from the changed Think tanks may reveal capacity for University of Plymouth

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 38 Feature Ten years older: A-level s

A recent article in Sociology, by Sarah Cant, Mike Savage and Anwesa Chatterjee (2020), The last issue of Network contained called ‘Popular but peripheral’, investigates the current state of A-level sociology in our schools. The paper presents a bleak picture. a feature on A-level sociology, The important findings depress us just as they will other readers. For our part the sparked by a recent journal paper paper has an additional importance because it throws our own distant experiences of A-level sociology into relief. In what follows which said it was ‘popular, but we meld our memories with some documents to give an account of long-ago experiences. But in so doing we add a note peripheral’. Gordon Fyfe and Denis of correction to the history. The conventional wisdom, to be found on the webpages of the BSA and repeated by Gleeson continue the theme with a the authors, is that A-level sociology had its debut in 1972. However, the date is wrong. The story of A-level sociology goes back to a look back at the origins of the syllabus of the early 1960s. In what follows we recover something of the history. From there we go on to suggest that the 1960s exam, which is 10 years older than A-level GCE speaks directly to the conclusions reached by Cant et al. At this point we must come clean and own up to previously thought having been among the pupils who sat their exams for A-level sociology in 1964 and 1965. We find the paper interesting partly because our experiences were so different “having only been introduced in 1972, it is now needs and aspirations of supposedly less-able to those described in ‘Popular but the eighth most popular A-level subject” pupils and the indifference of the peripheral’. We give some indication of the (Cant et al. 2020: 38, our emphasis). academically privileged who think sociology is nature of the difference and why we feel Cant, Savage and Chatterjee report an not for them. In talking to teachers, the that it matters. educational tragedy that is rooted in the authors uncover the hidden injuries of First, we turn to what Sarah Cant and her selective processes that govern student academic politics as they are played out in our colleagues have discovered and what they A-level choices. The tragedy is not just that schools. It is not just that school curricula have to say. ‘Popular but peripheral’ gives teachers and students of sociology find that reproduce the rivalries between university the results of a survey of schoolteachers’ what they do, however well they do it, is disciplines1; it is that they secrete a vocabulary experiences of teaching sociology. The undervalued. It is also that, as the authors of invidious comparison. The currency that is findings might be summed up in one word: note, more privileged pupils are separated the measure of their achievements is devalued anomie. Committed sociology teachers and from the benefits of a sociological and a discipline that illuminates inequalities their enthusiastic pupils pursue a subject imagination. The findings point to a tragic of cultural capital is stigmatised. One can but that is perceived by others to be vision, caught as the teachers are between the share the authors’ concern that, in the case of undemanding and lacking in intellectual sociology of all subjects, social inequality is rigour. School sociology is, it seems, not a expressed in the fine grain of the 21st century proper discipline. It can be taught by The conventional school curriculum. There can be few better anyone, sociology graduate or not, and is ‘ examples of what Pierre Bourdieu meant by stigmatised as a soft option. At the heart of wisdom is that A-level symbolic violence: “a violence which is the article is a puzzle concerning exercised by a social agent with his or her undergraduate recruitment to British sociology had its complicity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant universities. The majority of the UK’s 1992:167-8). prestigious Russell Group universities have debut in 1972–but Perhaps there are ways in which university undergraduate sociology programmes. sociologists might help to challenge all this? However, when it comes to admissions, the story actually goes Outreach work is certainly part of what those universities accord less weight to university departments do. But Cant and her A-level sociology than they do to other back to a syllabus of co-authors invite university teachers and the subjects. But here is the thing; the subject’s BSA to go further. Both might, for example, negative image co-exists with its popularity, the early 1960s work together with exam boards and with especially in non-selective schools. And, as schools. More broadly they might up their an A-level choice, sociology holds its own: ’ game as advocates for sociology within schools

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Feature 39 sociology’s real birthday

by lobbying the Department of Education. There is some force to the suggestions about strengthening the relationship between school sociology and university sociology. As retired university teachers, we are out of touch with current practices. But the author’s suggestions do resonate with our experiences many years ago as A-level sociology pupils. To go back to the beginning, there was an A-level sociology up and running nearly 60 years ago. The Oxford University Delegacy of Local Examinations Board (OUDLE) set the A-level ball rolling in 1962, when its History Committee agreed to “give further consideration to the proposed syllabus in sociology at Advance Level suggested by the Clapham Common Centre”. Some record of the shape of things, though apparently Denis Gleeson (left) and Gordon Fyfe patchy, can be found at Oxford University sociology. It had been compiled by him and general studies taking a more sociological Archives where the following documents are was being followed by sixth formers at his turn. Writing in 1963, the sociologist Geoff located: (i) a 1967 A-level GCE Syllabus for Clapham school. Mallins reported that his Hurd discovered that many schools, both sociology and (ii) A-level GCE sociology pupils were excited and stimulated by a grammar and secondary modern, had examination papers for several years “subject in which they could see a direct assigned a place within their general studies including the first exam paper dated 1964. relation between what they are studying” and programmes for social science topics. Hurd The archival references for these and other familiar social facts “which they are often at a describes a sociology pilot, though not an relevant documents are LE 1/4, 1955-78; LE loss to comprehend’” (TES, 1964, Feb. 7: A-level, at a Midlands boys grammar school. 42/ and LE 49/124-39.2 341). Significantly the programme was delivered An article in the Times Educational C. Wright Mills’s The Sociological Imagination by a university academic with classroom Supplement (TES) provides more information (1959) had probably not crossed his desk. support from the school’s senior history about the syllabus, its philosophy and its But Mallins encouraged awareness of the teacher. In reporting pupils’ feedback, both gestation. Its author, James T. Mallins, was links between public issues and private positive and negative, Hurd noted that some Deputy Head Teacher at the school we troubles. Pupils were introduced to key embraced ambiguity and were attracted by a attended (a Catholic secondary modern concepts and to the importance of subject that seemed not to fit into the school for boys, St Gerard’s in south conceptual rigour. The backbone of the conventional arts-sciences framework of the London). In common with some other syllabus was, as can be seen from Oxford's grammar school curriculum.4 teachers of the period, he had introduced a archive,3 the social structure of modern In the weeks that followed publication of social science element into the school Britain, including the distribution of Mallins’s article there were responses in the curriculum. So, in the TES (1964, Feb. 7: inequality and power. The history of social TES correspondence columns. John Raynor 341) and under the banner ‘Sociology in the survey work, elements of research design, at Edge Hill, though not unsympathetic, sixth form’, Mallins announced approval by and methods were covered. There was a thought that “making sociology just another the Oxford Board of an A-level syllabus in broad emphasis on social policy issues and a examination subject was the wrong thing to concern to clarify the role of the welfare state do”. Moreover, the syllabus contained much in 1960s post-war Britain. When it came to that was too complex. He worried that pupils The tragedy is, as the textbooks, sociology doorstops had yet to were likely “unable to distinguish between appear. There was the somewhat dated sound and unsound sociology” (TES, 1964, ‘authors point out, Rumney and Maier (1953 [1938]), the more Feb 14: 370). Not so easy then! Edward exciting profusely illustrated Broom and Sheridan at Gravesend Technical College was that more privileged Selznick (1963) (which was then the more positive, arguing that teaching the American market leader), and, published rudiments of sociology would broaden pupils are separated just in time, was Tom Bottomore’s Sociology pupils’ horizons (TES, 1964, Feb. 21: 450). (1962). The first pupils sat their exams in the Other schoolteachers were introducing summer of ’64. Later that year Mallins from the benefits sociology in the early 1960s. However, we are reported news of successful candidates not aware of another A-level at this time. pursuing sociology at a teacher training of a sociological Jennifer Platt (2003) notes that the BSA was college and at a university (TES 1964, Oct. 9: advising teacher training colleges. Indeed, 591). Did sociology belong in a school imagination there seems to have been a growing interest curriculum? ’ in social science teaching for schools, with Feature continues overleaf Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 40 Feature ‘How do we incite the im

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We recall discussions not so much about how easy it was, but about whether the intellectual demands of sociology were beyond the cognitive abilities of 16-year- olds. Oxford seems to have harboured doubters. But things were settled in October 1966 when the minutes of the delegates’ meeting show that the University's Congregation had “voted against a resolution to remove General Sociology from the list of Advanced Level Subjects recognised by the University as qualifying subjects for matriculation” (Oxford University Archives, Minutes of Delegates Meetings (LE 1/4, 1955-78)). In some respects, the Clapham story aligns with findings of Cant et al. A 1960s secondary modern school may confirm the stereotype of a subject not properly academic. Yet, that is not how things seemed to us at the time. Why that was so has much to do with the fluidity that characterised the English tripartite system from the late 1950s. The bond between education and occupation was less tight than it is today. But it was tightening in ways not anticipated by the authors of the1944 Education Act, for by that time some secondary moderns were following GCE curricula. In 1962 St Gerard’s acquired a sixth-form. Some of its teachers were uprating their skills and studying for diplomas and degrees. Mallins studied for the Diploma in Sociology at London University. It was in that way, no St Gerard’s Boys School, Clapham Common, London (1970). Reproduced by doubt, that he made contact with London- permission of London Borough of Lambeth, Archives Department. BL/DTP/UD/6/2/6/154 based university sociologists, some of whom, most notably O. R. McGregor and Basil Among the things reported by Cant et al. is some of whom have now been filtered out of Bernstein (both of London University), the apparent datedness of the curriculum. the canon. But they were not all dead! Some visited the school and met with fourth and There is the familiar problem of reconciling were alive and kicking in the pages of a fifth year pupils as early as 1961. the canon with contemporary relevance: yet ground-breaking new weekly paper. New Mallins networked on behalf of his pupils another dead sociologist? The sociologists Society was launched in October 1962 as a and forged links with university sociologists. that St Gerard’s pupils met and those about complement to New Scientist. Edited by the He secured access to London University’s whom they heard were generally white males, Conservative politician Timothy Raison and Senate House Library. He brokered their selling for one shilling, it was devoured in the enrolment onto the university’s extra-mural St Gerard’s sixth form. Crucially New Society sociology diploma. There were meetings We recall discussions connected its readers with both established with Bernstein at his university office in ‘ and up-and-coming sociologists. There was, Bloomsbury. Our memory is of Bernstein’s about whether the too, a wider sociological imagination to be commitment, enthusiasm and good found in writers such as John Berger and humour at these encounters. There was intellectual demands Angela Carter.5 occasional puzzlement on both sides of the There were other fluidities which favoured desk when things were lost in translation. of sociology were curriculum innovation at Clapham. A new On one occasion, asked to explain why Max headteacher had arrived and was committed Weber was so important, Bernstein patiently beyond the cognitive to a new vision for the school, and a second summarised the ins-and-outs of the sociology teacher, Roy Bennett, was Protestant ethic thesis. Explanation was abilities of appointed. More widely there was the way in followed by a moment’s silence before a which the secular world of curricula and voice piped up: “No, no. It’s not your bloke 16-year-olds examinations regulated by the state was Veber that worries me – it’s Weber!” ’ refracted through a Catholic ethos.6 And Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Feature 41 magination of students?

there was change in Catholicism itself, which References Platt, J. (2003) The British Sociological somehow made sociology relevant. Vatican Bottomore, T. B. (1962) Sociology: A Guide to Association: A Sociological History, Durham: II, with its turn towards the laity, had begun Problems and Literature, London: Allen and Sociology Press. its deliberations in October 1962 and it Unwin. Rumney, J. and Maier, J. 1953 [1938] The seems likely that this was part of Mallins’s Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (1992) An Science of Sociology, London: Gerald ‘social turn’. For Mallins, there was certainly Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Oxford: Polity Duckworth. a connection between his religious beliefs Press. and his sociological imagination. He was Broom, L. and Selznick, P. (1963) Sociology: Biographical notes interested, as he put it, in the “union of A Text with Adapted Readings, third edition, intellectual and scientific values with New York: Harper and Row. Gordon Fyfe was until 2003 senior lecturer understanding, sympathy and moral Cant, S., Savage, M., Chatterjee, A. (2020) in sociology at Keele University. He is purpose”. But above all, as he explained, the ‘Popular but peripheral: the ambivalent co-founder of the online journal Museum and point of it all was to “familiarise pupils with status of sociology education in schools in Society, based at the University of Leicester, the academic atmosphere of higher England’, Sociology 54 (1) 37-52. and honorary senior lecturer at the School education” (TES 1964). Davies, I. (1971) ‘The management of of Museum Studies at Leicester. The authors have surely hit the nail on the knowledge: a critique of the use of typologies [email protected] head when they call for collaboration in educational sociology’, in Earl Hopper between university departments, schools and (ed) Readings in the Theory of Educational Denis Gleeson taught sociology in further the BSA. There is today, as there was nearly Systems, London: Hutchinson. education and later published widely on the 60 years ago, more than one cage to be Hurd, G. E. (1963) The Teaching of the Social sociology of further education and training, rattled. What was at stake in the 1960s, and Sciences in Secondary Schools: With Special policy and practice. He has worked at Keele what matters today, is the bigger picture of Reference to the Teaching of Sociology, MA and Warwick universities and was for a time the social sciences in both schools and Dissertation, University of Leicester. Chair of The Sociological Review. He is universities. What is the future for younger Mallins, J. T. (1964) ‘Sociology in the sixth emeritus professor at the Centre for students and teachers when it comes to form: pilot syllabus at A Level’, The Times Education Studies, at Warwick. accessing independent and evidence-based Educational Supplement, February 7: 341). [email protected] teaching and research in sociology? How might we move beyond agendas that denigrate democratic education and shut down the opportunities enjoyed by the baby- boomer generation? How might we raise the profile of sociology in a transactional world where the complexity of human relationships is reduced to the simplicity of deals? And how, above all, might we incite the sociological imaginations of A-level students?

Notes 1. See LSE sociologist Donald G. MacRae's letter to The Times where he counters the charge of sociology’s softness with his suspicion that “some degrees in natural science and technology might shock” (The Times, 1967: Friday, August, pg. 7). 2. Thanks are due to Timothy Lovering, previously of the Oxford University Archives and now at Dundee University, who helped us by recovering the associated documentary evidence. 3. Oxford University Archives, Oxford Local Examinations: General Certificate of Education: Regulations: Regulations, 1970 (from LE 42/1) 4, C. P. Snow’s two cultures were much in the air. 5. An early contributor was Laurie Taylor whose BBC Radio 4 programme conveys the ethos that was New Society. 6. See Davies, I. (1971: 126-7) on this aspect of Catholic school curricula.

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 42 Feature ‘When it comes to gender and race people are energised against the President’

here cannot be a more pressing moment Tfor Gary Younge to bring to academia Gary Younge, the author and his expertise of life in the US and UK, gained from 26 years in journalism. Guardian columnist, has recently In an interview with Network, given against a background of worldwide protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of begun work as a professor of Minneapolis police, Professor Younge called the killing “depressingly familiar”. sociology at the University of Drawing on a dozen years’ reporting from America for The Guardian, he said: “I wasn’t Manchester. Network interviews there for anything like this scale of rebellion but the core issues that made this possible him about how he sees the past, have always been there. It’s always been an incredibly flammable situation waiting for a spark. present and future... “We have had four years of Trump and race baiting, the emboldening of a certain sort of white nativist attitude, the dispropor- tionate deaths from Covid, a whole range of “People are energised, particularly when unemployed. Beyond the racial implications things, and people have had enough. A bit it comes to gender and race, against the of Covid there are just the overall like school shootings, they [police killings] President himself. When something like this implications of Covid. Large numbers of always sadden but they rarely surprise. The happens significant numbers of people who people are unemployed and there is no situation is depressingly familiar. may have looked askance, who may have sense, as far as I can see from polling, that “The rebellions call for an end to systemic stood at arms length, are reacting anybody thinks that Donald Trump is racism. Quite how you get there is a differently. handling this well. different matter, one will have to see. One “Also, black America, like black Britain, “There is a well of frustration – a massive of the interesting things about these has a massive discrepancy in the number of amount of unemployment, a massive particular uprisings has been who is people who are dying. The lockdown has amount of uncertainty. Everything that the participating. There are a lot of white left, the last I saw, one in two black people government is doing is inadequate and that people involved in them and there’s been is also part of this heady brew. quite a significant radicalisation of young “But we shouldn’t forget that Black Lives people over the past 10 or 15 years, but We have had four Matter started under Obama. That’s when particularly since Trump came into power.” ‘ the question of whether black people can This cry for change was bottom-up rather years of Trump and walk down the street without being shot was than top-down. “There is nothing to suggest raised as a national issue. Of course, Obama that the root and branch changes that race baiting, and did not give the protestors a target in would need to happen in order to stop this himself, whereas three of the four largest have any electoral expression. I can’t people have had demonstrations in America have taken place imagine that Trump would bring them in the last four years. about and I can’t imagine that Joe Biden enough –it’s always “It should also be said that after the ’67 will bring them about, given their records, riots there was Nixon [elected President in so then it’s going to be a question of how been an incredibly 1968]. He was electoral beneficiary of the much pressure can be brought to bear on ’67 riots and not by a little bit, either. These them and we have yet to really see. It’s early flammable situation moments of social tension are incredibly days for that. ’ polarising and the electoral and broader Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Feature 43

This photo is used under the Creative Commons licence: https://tinyurl.com/ydx6h3dc

political consequences are never quite clear.” His time in America produced five books, didn’t really understand them. So while I Professor Younge’s years of reporting from whose titles attest to his willingness to was in Manchester doing a class as a visiting the US, including his residence there from journey through the country in search of professor, I asked one of my now colleagues, 2003 to 2015, have given him an insight into what sociologists would recognise as first- ‘What am I doing wrong here? You work in its racism and how it compares to the UK. rate ethnography, among them: No Place this field. I feel like, somehow, something’s “They’re very different – American racism Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the not coming through’. She said, ‘Why don’t and British racism operate very differently American South (1999); Stranger in a Strange you come and work here?’ That started the and I felt different. I didn’t feel more or less Land: Encounters in the Disunited States conversation.” safe necessarily, but I had to watch out for (2006); and Another Day in the Death of The move was also a chance to try different things. I had to listen for different America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives (2016). something novel. “Having worked in not things and that was particularly true once I On the way he picked up various awards, just the same profession but the same place had children who were American. including the 2009 James Cameron award for 26 years, I wanted to try something new, “In every way I had to learn a new for the “combined moral vision and and also the chance to pursue a thought, to language. Each racism has its own language. professional integrity” of his coverage of the think, ‘This is interesting, X is interesting’. I understood the language of British racism Barack Obama election campaign. “In journalism, every Thursday I had to fluently, I’d grown up with it and I knew what The switch to academia has its roots in a have an idea that was 1,200 words long, that to listen for and how to navigate it, but in love of teaching that he developed when he nobody else had done that week, that both America I had to learn a new language and was a visiting professor at Brooklyn College my editors and I were interested in. That’s had to learn a different way in which people and at LSBU and Manchester. He asked the nature of being a columnist. would understand me differently, sometimes several contacts at journalism courses in the “You can’t write about the same thing for better and sometimes for worse.” UK if there would be a role for him, without every week and so you become a very adept Britain wasn’t necessarily any easier to live success, before a colleague at the University generalist who can talk about many things in, he said. “We see from statistics about, for of Manchester suggested there would be a for, maybe, 10 minutes but in the 11th example, knife crime, school exclusions or position for him there. minute you’re sunk because 10 minutes is Covid, that Britain isn’t necessarily a “I was interested in making a move into probably already a couple of minutes over particularly safe place to be a black academia. My first couple of enquiries had and beyond what you had to know. person.” met with a response that was confusing, I Feature continues overleaf

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 44 Feature

‘It’s possible the first article I submit will be rejected’

Continued from previous page “There was a desire to just go further with This photo is used under the Creative a few of the things that I was interested in – Commons licence: to think, ‘What would happen if I pursued https://tinyurl.com/y7pk4z4z that?’ I would read books about the things that I was interested in and think, ‘Maybe I canon. For all the problems around the could do more enquiry into that’. canon you have to know it before you can “It’s quite nice to have an idea on a critique it. My job over the summer is to pull Tuesday and think, ‘Yes, but I’m not quite myself up to a level of reference that one sure where to go with that’ and to move on would expect or that I would expect of in that thought and, maybe in a couple of myself. weeks, to think, ‘I wonder what I can do with “I can’t pretend that I’ve spent my life in a that now I’ve got to that place’. It’s a much way that has led directly to this point. It’s not faster metabolism in journalism and I wanted like I studied sociology at A-level and at to slow down a bit. university, that I did a masters and a PhD and “There are two things I’m interested in I’ve now arrived here after years of research. looking at. One is young people and That’s not how I got here and they know violence. I wrote a book in 2016, Another Day that. I bring other things to the table, but in the Death of America, about all the kids shot now I am here I’d like to learn the basics of dead in one day, and I did a series for The the language of the field that I’m in.” Guardian called ‘Beyond the blade’ about This would involve a new way of writing, knife crime in Britain and youth violence. conversations are necessarily delayed and one quite different from journalism. “I know That raised a lot of questions for me that I we’re in the middle of this huge turmoil, so from the experience of reading academic wasn’t going to be able to pursue in a things like lectures are changing and it’s not texts that I find them exhausting. They’re journalistic format, so I’m looking forward to known yet the degree to which there will be not written to be enjoyed or to be devoured. working with people who do work on that any on-campus teaching.” They have a different purpose. kind of thing and to having the time to find Professor Younge’s approach is not one of “In the same way that we have different out more about it. an expert who has nothing more to learn – registers, if I’m talking to my kids or if I’m “The other thing is black Europe, he is spending the next few months talking to my wife, I’d like to see if I can write particularly post-war black Europe. My grounding himself in sociology’s insights. appropriately for that world, and that will undergraduate degree [Heriot-Watt “I’m reading Stuart Hall’s memoirs at the have an effect on my other writing, but that University] was in French and Russian. I moment, a book on black British cultural doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a graduated in 1992, the year the EU single studies and one on French women in post- bad effect. It depends how one uses it. It’s a market was set up. I trained as a translator, I war France. I’ve read quite a bit of Tina process and I am up for the challenge. also speak some German, and I’ve long been Campt on her work on Afro-Germans so I’m “One of the ways that you keep yourself intrigued by the presence and history of probably really only reading sociologists real and fresh and engaged, I think, is to be black people on the European continent and apart from when I’m reading fiction, and it’s constantly making yourself vulnerable, to do how their experiences overlap and differ and quite wide ranging. things that you haven’t done before and to so I’ll be doing some work on that.” “I intend, because I’m not a trained try stuff that might not work. It’s perfectly His move to Manchester on 1 April this sociologist, to spend some time with the possible the first journal article that I submit year coincided with the lockdown. “Since I’ve will be rejected and that’s how you learn. I’m been in academia, the university’s been up for that. That doesn’t scare me.” closed and there have been no students. I American racism and Will he miss journalism? “I don’t think so – haven’t had any opportunity to see maybe. First of all, I’m still writing. Being a colleagues face-to-face – there have been ‘British racism operate professor doesn’t preclude doing bits of Zoom meetings and all that. journalism so I won’t miss it in that sense. “Next year, I will be doing lectures, There’s a degree to which, when something primarily bigger lectures, and smaller very differently. I happens, you want to be one of the first out seminars on long-form writing, and then the box, you want to be in the mix and that’s other things within the department. I’m didn’t feel more or not where I am now. It’s where my reflexes doing three public lectures next term, one are and where my impulses are because that’s on protests, one on media reporting of knife less safe in the US what I’ve been doing for 26 years. crime and one on the American election. “To sit out a moment in the knowledge “I’m not going to start teaching students necessarily, but I had that maybe you’ll come back to it in two until 2021 at the earliest because the courses weeks or a month or three months or never for this year had already been submitted. to watch out for or a year, that will take some getting used to, “Exactly what I’ll be teaching is still to be different things but I keep reminding myself that that’s what figured out. Because of Covid a lot of those ’ I wanted.” Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Appreciation 45 Sociologists pay tribute to Professor David Morgan

Sociologists speak of their was “generous to a fault and always has sadness at the death of been.” The BSA’s Chief Executive, Judith Mudd, Professor David Morgan, said: “David was such a kind and generous whose work on the family person. I am glad that he was honoured with the BSA’s Distinguished Service to Sociology and relationships was Award.” ground-breaking His death was greeted with regret by sociologists. In a tweet the Morgan Centre said: “We are very sad to share the news that David Morgan, born 1937, was a highly David Morgan, who let us share his name, influential thinker on the sociology of the has died. He was a hugely influential family and gender studies. The Morgan sociologist, and a kind and generous friend. Centre for Research into Everyday Lives at We know that lots of Morgan Centre family the University of Manchester was named and friends will miss him very much.” after him, a testimony to his highly Professor Sasha Roseneil tweeted: “As a influential work. PhD student at my first @britsoci Professor Morgan went to the University conference, I was rescued from aloneness by of Hull in 1957, having completed two years’ David’s warm, inclusive conversation. Later I National Service in the Royal Air Force, to came to realise how aligned this was with his study economics, with sociology as a work on practices of masculinity, family and specialist subject. After further study at Hull, relationships. A great loss to sociology...” he went to the University of Manchester to Helen Norman wrote: “Really saddened to research a PhD and began his teaching Above: David Morgan as President of the BSA hear the news of David Morgan’s death. He in 1998. Below, Professor Morgan receiving career there in 1964. the BSA’s Distinguished Service Award in 2016 provided invaluable steer and feedback on Professor Morgan taught in the Sociology one of my first papers and always made time Department at Manchester for almost 35 to stop at my desk to say hello on his visits to years and, after retiring, held an emeritus Social Theory and the Family (1975); Family, @MCRSociology at the @morgancentre. He professorship there, together with visiting Politics and Social Theory (1985); Discovering will be greatly missed.” professorships at Keele University and Men (1992); Family Connections (1996); Professor Gayle Letherby tweeted: “David NTNU, Trondheim. Gender, Bodies and Work (2005, with Berit Morgan was an influential scholar and a His books included the ground-breaking Brandth and Elin Kvande, eds); Transitions wonderfully generous and kind colleague in Context: Leaving Home, Independence and and mentor to many (me included, all Adulthood (2005 with Clare Holdsworth); across my career). Such a fun chum too. I and Acquaintances: The Space Between Intimates am truly heartbroken by his death. So many and Strangers (2009). He also published in a of us will miss him so very, very much.” variety of learned journals and edited • Network will run an appreciation of Professor collections. Morgan’s life and work in the next issue. Professor Morgan was also an active member of the BSA, serving as President from 1997 to 1999, and was an editor of its David Morgan was journal Sociology from 1991 to 1994. ‘ He was awarded the BSA’s Distinguished an influential Service to Sociology Award in 2016. In giving the award, the BSA’s then President, scholar and a Professor Lynn Jamieson, said he was “the theorist of families and relationships in the wonderfully UK and has been for many decades.” She said his work was responsible for generous and kind “rescuing the family from the theoretical backwater that it was inhabiting. It’s the way colleague and he ties together personal life and social theory that is such an important mentor to many – contribution.” Professor Morgan, she said, had made such a fun chum “decades of contributions” to the BSA and ’ Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 46 Appreciation John Veit-Wilson, 1936–2020

typical sociologist. Although the families of standpoint (a few days before he died, he The life and work of John both his parents had been well-established said he had no fear of death because while Veit-Wilson is marked in this members of the German bourgeoisie, his he had tried to live his life by ethical parents were in Spain where his father was standards, he did not believe in the article by Professor Geoff working for an international metals trading existence of a deity) John declined to do company when John was born, on 15 national service. Although he was given Payne, of Newcastle January 1936. exemption by the Board for Conscientious University, written with the They returned to Germany from Bilbao a Objectors, he volunteered to serve in the few months later, on the outbreak of the Friends Ambulance Unit International help of various researchers Spanish Civil War, arriving as moneyless Service where he worked for 15 months in refugees. His father was posted to London hospitals and medical administration, until and then to South America, but following becoming an undergraduate at St A long-term figure in Newcastle University’s their divorce, John’s mother stayed in Catharine’s College, Cambridge in 1955. Sociology group, Professor John Veit-Wilson London with her English grandmother’s At St Catharine’s he read economics and died on 10 May, aged 84. He had been family, who sponsored her as a Jewish social anthropology (in the 1950s, sociology diagnosed with terminal multiple myeloma refugee from Nazi Germany. John was cared was still a very undeveloped discipline in in 2014 but continued to work until a few for by his paternal grandmother in Berlin Britain) and on graduation, was offered a weeks before his death. His courteous, until he was brought to England in January business management training position with insightful contributions and good humour 1939. the Colonial Development Corporation will be much missed by his colleagues and From the age of six he was a boarder at (CDC). However, having met his future his many contacts in Newcastle, nationally the Friends’ School in Saffron Walden, Swedish wife, he applied to do postgraduate and internationally. where he was known first by the name study at Stockholm University and was John saw his work as being primarily Hanno Simon and then as John Wilson, awarded a Swedish Government about the connections between the after his mother married the leading X-ray Scholarship. His Masters-level Diploma in conceptualising and measurement of crystallographer, Arthur Wilson, who social science included welfare economics poverty, where he drew on the legacy of B.S. adopted John, giving him anglicised and social policy, with his dissertation being Rowntree and Beveridge, and the structural versions of his German names. When he was on ‘problem families’ in Sweden. and political processes determining anti- 19, John chose to re-assume Veit in his The next few years were unsettled ones in poverty social security policies. He helped name, a situation legally regularised when John’s career. Returning to Britain, he took establish the minimum income standards he married Astri Klein in 1959. up the previous offer of management approach to ‘decent living’ and the idea of a In keeping with his lifelong ethical training with the CDC but left when it real living wage. As he wrote last year in his became apparent that the CDC were final blog for the Child Poverty Action reluctant to employ married trainees in the Group, having a decent level of living colonies. He joined the Federation of “means having freedom to choose to live a His role as mentor and British Industries to carry out economic socially inclusive life, to do all the same silly, ‘ research, a post which John later described wasteful things that everyone else can do… counsellor, together as turning out to be “clerical work with a It means not being told how to live your life Cambridge accent”. He moved to the by other people who control your with his personal Central Electricity Generating Board where resources”. he worked on finding practical solutions to A consultant to the EU European Anti- charm and dry administrative problems but remained keen Poverty Network, John’s international to get into academic research. reputation and contribution to sociology humour, meant his Having contributed to a pilot study of and social policy were recognised in 2003 by large families with Hilary Land at LSE, he an honorary fellowship of the Joint birthday party found himself well-placed, with a choice University Council and fellowship of the between research officer posts in industrial Academy of Social Sciences (2007). In 2014, attracted so many sociology at Aston, local government when the Social Policy Association marked research for the Maud Commission and his lifetime achievement with its Special social policy at the then new University of Recognition Award, he spoke of the guests that a larger Essex. importance of listening to “the voices of the His fortunate choice of the latter involved poor”. venue was needed him in a pilot study of long-term sick and John’s background was not that of a ’ disabled men and their families, and the

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Appreciation 47

This photo is used under the Creative Commons licence: https://tinyurl.com/y7byebrp

Council for National Academic Awards- validated degrees in sociology, and in two innovatory programmes which combined sociology with social work and social research. After Sociology was merged into a large inter-disciplinary school in 1987, John concentrated on a more academic role as Professor of Social Policy. However, feeling that social policy was becoming marginalised in the polytechnic, he chose early retirement in 1992, with the title of emeritus professor. Michael Hill, head of Newcastle University’s Department of Social Policy, immediately invited him to become a guest member of staff, first as principal research associate and then as visiting professor, where he supervised graduate students and worked on his own research until his death 28 years later. However, John was as much a public advocate as an academic, responding to government consultations and lobbying parliamentary committees. He was active in international groups like the European Anti-Poverty Network, contributing to the campaign for a European Minimum Income first national poverty survey with Peter teaching guide from LSE, which came to Directive. Townsend and Brian Abel-Smith. light when he was clearing his university In 1965 he had been one of the founders In 1966 he toured Europe and Sweden to office in 2018, explained that the syllabus of Child Poverty Action Group, writing one establish a network of poverty researchers for this paper “virtually consists of the of its early policy papers, and for the rest of with his mother, Harriett Wilson, who was application of the major social sciences to his life served variously as committee already a leading contributor to poverty problems of social policy”, which suited member, vice-chair and trustee. Locally, he studies in her own right. This experience, John’s breadth of expertise. was a board member of the Newcastle together with working with Townsend and His other duties consisted of ‘service Council of Voluntary Service, chairing it for Abel-Smith and on the 1967 International teaching’ to degrees in other subjects, as 12 years, and also chaired the Newcastle and Poverty Conference at Essex, were the part of a liberal studies tradition, a chore Whitley Housing Trust. foundations on which his later career and that continued during the chaotic early Not surprisingly, his role as mentor and many publications in poverty research were ‘Wild West’ days of the new polytechnics. counsellor, together with his personal built. Being a little older than most of his also charm and dry humour, meant his “130th” On completion of his three-year contract newly recruited colleagues, John brought a birthday party (a combined celebration with at Essex, John “took the first academic job I cosmopolitan vision and good-natured his 50-year old son Simon) attracted so was offered”, at Rutherford College of maturity to meetings and planning that many guests that a larger venue was needed. Technology, which 18 months later would helped to stabilise operations. He also took A member of the Newcastle Upon Tyne become Newcastle Polytechnic (and on a previously unpopular sociology course Meeting, his love of hill-walking gave him subsequently, Northumbria University). His on the Newcastle University town planning another wider circle of friends well beyond main teaching responsibility was the social degree with such success that the students his many colleagues in sociology. policy and social administration optional began demanding more sociology rather John was married to Astri until their paper on the London University BA than less. divorce in 1977 and had three children, Sociology external degree which, as in most By 1974, he had been become Head of Antonia, Judith and Simon. He leaves six large colleges and polytechnics at that time, Sociology (a career grade post in the granddaughters and four great- was the focus of sociology teaching. A 1965 polytechnic system), running three new grandchildren.

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 48 Appreciation Johan Goudsblom, 1932–2020

contact from then onwards. later the advocates of phenomenology, Professor Stephen Mennell, Joop’s doctorate was published in 1960 rational choice, quantitative and other of University College Dublin, under the title Nihilisme en Cultuur. It was a sociological perspectives. The most study of the problem of nihilism – a state of comprehensive exposition of his vision of writes about his friend and mind in which nothing appears to have the discipline of sociology came in Sociology colleague Johan Goudsblom value or meaning – in Western culture. The in the Balance (1977). Although many of the English translation, Nihilism and Culture, did sociologists referred to may now seem a not appear until 1980, but the first book long time back, this book is still an inspiring that Joop wrote in English had already been read not just for figurational sociologists but published in 1967. That was Dutch Society, a for all sociologists. Regrettably, it did not comprehensive survey of the distinctive have as great an impact in the Anglophone Johan Goudsblom, Professor Emeritus of social features and national habitus of the world as it did in Dutch. For that, I think Sociology at the University of Amsterdam – Netherlands. The book is still well worth there were two significant reasons. First, always known as Joop – died on 17 March reading precisely for its insights into Dutch although this book is not an exposition of 2020. He was well known to many British social development, including the famous Elias, the fact that at the time Elias was still sociologists through his long association verzuiling or pillarisation that has now very little known in the English-speaking with the University of Leicester and largely disappeared. If the book made less world meant that readers were perplexed, friendship with Norbert Elias. His impact than it deserved, it was because at asking themselves ‘where is the author contribution to the wider recognition of the that very moment Dutch society, which had coming from?’ Secondly, Joop always wrote value and significance of the work of seemed rather stolid and conservative, a spare and elegant English. His was a Norbert Elias was unparalleled. But as we suddenly underwent startlingly rapid ‘minimalist art’ and many sociologists – mourn, it is more important to record that change. This was the period of the Vietnam ‘theorists’ especially – see no value in ideas Joop himself had one of the world’s most War, student unrest across the world and, in that are clearly expressed rather than penetrating sociological minds. Amsterdam the celebrated ‘white bicycles’. dressed up in obscurantism and Joop was born in north Holland, an only In 1968, Joop was appointed a very young neologisms. child. He lived through the wartime full professor, and the following year Elias In 1977, with Hermann Korte and Peter occupation of the Netherlands, including was invited to Amsterdam as visiting Gleichmann, Joop edited a festschrift to the ‘hunger winter’ of 1944–5, which he professor. There are tales of Elias sitting mark Norbert Elias’s 80th birthday, Human remembered vividly. Decades later, in the cross-legged in a student-organised seminar Figurations, which was presented to Elias at kitchen at his home in Amsterdam, when I on ‘Revolution: personal and political’. Joop what in retrospect was a relatively small was fuming at the American invasion of himself, like Elias, navigated the tricky international gathering in Aachen. Elias’s Iraq, proclaiming that “people don’t like currents of student discontent more magnum opus still had not appeared in their countries being invaded”, Joop successfully than some of his colleagues. English translation. When the two volumes commented drily, “Well, I’ve lived through Elias became a frequent visitor to were published, in 1978 and 1982, Elias’s two invasions of the Netherlands; it is true Amsterdam and eventually, in 1977, took up repute in Germany and the Netherlands that we didn’t like being invaded by the permanent residence in the apartment began to jump the language barrier and a Germans, but we were quite pleased to see above the Goudsbloms’ house. steady stream of books and essays began to the Canadians”. During the late 1960s and 1970s, there appear in various languages. Joop was active In 1951 he went to the University of began to form around Joop a formidable in all this, but none of this immense activity Amsterdam to read social psychology and, research group, which came to be known as in promoting the ideas of Elias and apart from short periods as visiting ‘the Amsterdam school’ before the slightly ‘figurational’ or process-sociology ever professor elsewhere, he was to remain there misleading label of ‘figurational sociology’ seemed to diminish Joop’s output of books for the rest of his life. Early in his student caught on. Over the years, Joop supervised and essays of his own on many topics. His days came an important encounter. He an astonishing number of doctorates on an death at the beginning of the Covid-19 heard his professor, A. N. J. den Hollander, equally astonishing range of topics (from pandemic serves to remind us, for instance, refer to a book by one Norbert Elias: Über nuclear war to food history, for example). of his notable essay on ‘Public health and den Prozess der Zivilisation. Joop found a copy They all, however, bore the hallmarks of the the civilising process’ (Milbank Quarterly, of the 1939 first edition in the university figurational or Eliasian perspective: 1986), which discussed leprosy, bubonic library and it made a profound and lasting simultaneously macro- and micro-, plague, syphilis, cholera and Aids. impression on him. Later, he used to say psychogenetic and sociogenetic, with From the early 1980s, Joop was working that he had read the book at least a dozen historical depth as well as contemporary on what became Fire and Civilization (1992). times, and he had found new insights every reference. All this was controversial: Joop Civilising processes happen in various forms time. Joop finally met Elias in person at the had to do (intellectual) battle with more and scales in all times and places, and Joop’s 1956 ISA World Congress of Sociology in conventional Dutch sociologists – at first insight was that a civilising process had been Amsterdam and they maintained close structural-functionalists and Marxists, and involved in the first great ecological

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Appreciation 49

transition in the course of human William H. McNeill and, with colleagues in Dutch literary magazine Tirade, which is development – the mastery of the active use Amsterdam, he developed a course in ‘Big published to this day, and the volume was of fire that came millennia before the history’ inspired by his friend David very well received by literary critics who better-recognised agrarian and industrial Christian. One product of these years was knew little about Joop as a sociologist. Sadly, revolutions. Mastery of fire involved the the book Mappae Mundi, edited and largely the first volume ends before most of us intertwining of biological evolution and written by Joop and the scientist Bert de knew him and the second volume remained social development. Keeping a fire going Vries. It was grandly launched in 2000 in the unwritten. necessitated social organisation for presence of HM Queen Beatrix of the In 1958, Joop married Maria Oestreicher, gathering fuel, keeping watch and cooking. Netherlands. Another product, less grand in who as a child had survived deportation Fire and Civilisation took the story forward scope but with an even grander title, was The from Amsterdam to Bergen-Belsen into the agrarian and industrial eras, yet Course of Human History (1996), co-authored concentration camp. They were as close a once again Joop was disappointed at the with the economic historian Eric Jones and couple as can be imagined, intellectual book’s patchy reception. Specialists in me. companions as well as life partners. Their human evolution seemed not to see the From its foundation in 1983, Joop was a two children, Clara and Frank, were born in relevance for them of a contribution by a member of the board of the Norbert Elias 1964 and 1967. After her death in 2009, sociologist and most mainstream Foundation, managing both Elias’s material Joop referred to Maria’s ‘omni-absence’. sociologists, having executed what Elias legacy and his literary affairs after his death Upon his retirement in 1997, Joop was called their ‘retreat into the present’, were in 1990. The Foundation’s major presented with a collection of essays, Alles not greatly interested in the early origins of achievements have included the publication Verandert [‘Everything changes’], something the human species. They had also become of Elias’s Gesammelte Schriften (1997–2010) that in Dutch is called not a festschrift but a unaccustomed to a sociologist dipping into and the Collected Works (2006–14). liber amicorum – a book of friends. That the literature of disciplines as diverse as In 2016, Joop published what should have was very appropriate. For so many of us, in ecology, biology, archaeology and been the first of two volumes of Britain and many other countries, Joop was anthropology. autobiography, entitled Geleerd: Memoires a close friend. For me, he was my most In the 1990s and 2000s, Joop’s attention 1932–1968, which took his story up to his important intellectual mentor – I have often was increasingly directed towards appointment as professor. Besides his said that I learned more from Joop about understanding the planet’s present prominence as a sociologist, he had always the Eliasian way of thinking than I did predicament in the context of very long- had something of a literary reputation in directly from Norbert Elias himself. We term social development. He kept up a long the Netherlands – in 1957 he had been a mourn the loss of a great intellect and correspondence with the world historian co-founder, and proposed the title, of the wonderful person.

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network 50 News feature David Marsland, 1939-2020

David Marsland stood out as a somewhat controversial figure within British sociology, given his stance as an avowed neo-conservative and critic of the discipline. Here, sociologist Athena Leoussi-Marsland writes about the life and work of her husband, who died in April

Professor David Marsland was the only He was passionately concerned for the recipient of the Thatcher Award in 1991, welfare of young people, spending a large which was presented to him by Lady Margaret part of his academic career in the service of Thatcher in person, for his defence of youth, being particularly concerned about industry, enterprise and his sociological Afro-Caribbean youth. As a young lecturer at analysis of the conditions of freedom. As a Brunel University, which was his academic neo-conservative Thatcherite, he held radical home for four decades (1964-2004), he political views. He argued forcefully and established in 1973 the Centre for Youth relentlessly against the dependency, idleness, Work Studies. Working with the National Berger, especially his book, The Capitalist poverty and moral weakness that generalised Youth Bureau, and as a member of the Revolution, the sources of what he called the welfare state provision cultivated. Through Department of Education and Science’s in- ‘sociology of freedom’. These thinkers offered his numerous writings, academic and service training panel, he influenced youth alternative intellectual and sociological popular, as well as TV and radio interviews, policies at both regional and national levels. visions that were more open to the truth newspaper articles and the BBC 2 film that he He advocated community service for young about the kind of values and institutions made in 1994, ‘Let’s kill nanny’, he advocated people and emphasised the need for trained which freedom and human progress require. welfare reform. Ironically, these principles youth workers. Community service, especially Describing himself as a ‘dissident’ in were later implemented by a Labour for unemployed young people, would bring Marxist-dominated Euro-Atlantic sociology, government. reciprocal gains to both young people and he aligned himself with leading advocates of His numerous books analysing and the community: it would give young people freedom in the social sciences and public assessing the effects of welfare state provision opportunities for personal development and policy, on both sides of the Atlantic: the from national and international perspectives, would improve the quality of life in the community, British, Donald McRae, Julius Gould, David include Cradle to Grave: Comparative Perspectives assisting the work of social services. His numerous Martin, Digby Anderson, Dennis O’Keeffe, on the State of Welfare (with Ralph Segalman, publications on youth include, Sociological David Levy and Peter Saunders; and the 1989), Self-Reliance (1995) and Welfare or Explorations in the Service of Youth (1978), Black Americans, George Gilder, Charles Murray, Welfare State? (1996). Kids, White Kids – What Hope? (with M Day, Tom Sowell and Walter Williams. Professor Marsland had a keen sense of 1978) and Understanding Youth (1993). His later research interest was in epidemiology, social responsibility, assuming many public A maverick in conventional sociological as Director of the Centre for Epidemiological roles and receiving many honours. He was a circles, he passionately and bravely tried to Research in the Department of Health and Fellow of the Royal Society of Health and of reform the discipline that he loved and to Social Care, developing new approaches to the Institute of Supervisory Management, a which he devoted his entire academic life. He research methods in healthcare. member of the Unesco Social Sciences did this from within, as a committed and His approach to research was influenced by Board, the Department of Health’s selection active member of the British Sociological his classical studies at Cambridge, which kept panel for research training awards, the Association. In numerous books, and, above him on a humanist track and directed him executive committee of the Social Research all, in his book, Seeds of Bankruptcy (1988), he towards issues where personal autonomy and Association, the social sciences committee of criticised British sociology’s socialist bias, its freedom are central. His classical studies the Council for National Academic Awards, contempt for industry and business, its deepened and refined his innate sensibility and of the School Examination and advocacy of state planning and state control, for language. He took great care over the way Assessment Council. He was also Honorary its denigration of individualism and he wrote and spoke. They made him a General Secretary of the British Sociological enterprise, its moral relativism and its Renaissance man, a man of knowledge and Association, specialist advisor to the pandering to oppressive and incompetent culture, with interests in art, music and poetry, Parliamentary Social Security Committee and socialist regimes around the world. Through and everything that had ever preoccupied the featured in The Guardian series of ‘Celebrity his own sociological research, as well as human mind. He wrote poetry and had a scholars’. He acquired instant fame in the polemical writings about it, he consistently collection of his poems published. wider British public when Ali G interviewed defended scholarly standards, His scholarly output was formidable, him on his TV comedy series, ‘Ali G in da methodological rigour and public-use value including some 20 books and more than 200 USAiii’ on 28 April 2000. against ideological and political intrusions of papers in British and international journals. His parents had come down from Sheffield all kinds, in sociological research. He had an international reputation and his to Watford where his father had found work Marsland’s analysis and understanding of work was translated into Japanese, Norwegian as a male nurse at a psychiatric hospital. As a freedom were inspired by the pioneering and Polish. He received more than £2 million scholarship boy at Watford Grammar School founders of sociology and their successors: at current prices in research funding on (1950-58), a classics scholar at Christ’s Herbert Spencer, especially his book Man youth, health and welfare, and sociological College, Cambridge (1958-61), and holder of versus the State, and Max Weber, a sharp critic theory and methodology, by state agencies a state studentship for postgraduate study at of Karl Marx who warned against ‘the (including the Department of Education and the London School of Economics (1961-64), tutelage of the only really inescapable power the Manpower Services Commission), he embodied and actively defended the – the bureaucracy in state and economy’. funding councils (eg. the ESRC), foundations benefits of grammar school education for Among their successors, Marsland saw in (e.g., Gulbenkian), and The Hanson Trust social mobility. Talcott Parsons, Raymond Aron and Peter (£250,000).

Network Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Events 51

Events listing 9 July 2020–22 Jan 2021 Events as at 18/6/20. For a complete and up to date list see: www.britsoc.co.uk/events/key-bsa-events-lister

Please note: due to the Covid lockdown, events may be subject to change – please check our website for current information

Victim Blame and Sexual Violence – How Agencies Blame Women: Violence Against Women 13 July Study Group Webinar

16 July COVID-19 – Disabled Responses to Covid-19: Disability Study Group Webinar

22 July Spelunking 2020: Games, Cultures, Societies: Postgraduate Forum Webinar

23 July COVID-19 – Intersectional Inequalities: Disability Study Group Webinar

27 July Sex Work and Intimate Partner Violence: Violence Against Women Study Group Webinar

Youth Transitions: Past, Present and Future Workshop: 3 September University of Manchester Postgraduate Regional Event

4 September Brunel University Sports Study Group Virtual Postgraduate Forum

The Purpose of the Sociology of Sport – Challenges and 23 September Solent University Opportunities: Sport Study Group Workshop

Decolonising Families and Relationships: BSA Families 22 January 2021 UCL London and Relationships Study Group

Would you like to contribute to Network? We are looking for letters, opinions and news articles

For more information please contact Tony Trueman at: [email protected] or on 07964 023392, or BSA Chief Executive Judith Mudd at: [email protected]

The Autumn 2020 edition of Network will be published in December. Copy deadlines are around two months before publication (please check with Tony or Judith).

We try to print all material received, but pressure of space may lead to articles being edited and publication being delayed; some articles may be carried online only.

Books for review can be seen at: http://bit.ly/2gM3tDt

Magazine of the British Sociological Association, Summer 2020 Network BSA Annual Review, 2019

President’s Report ooking back over however everyday life begins to emerge from ‘lockdown’ and L 2019 and forward to especially to our 70th Annual Conference in 2021 which will the remaining focus on ‘re-making the future’ – a theme that could hardly be months of my Presidency of the BSA (how did it go that more timely. Inspired by some successes of our online activities fast?!) is a somewhat dizzying experience. This time last this year, and determined that the 70th will be the biggest and year, Brexit was uppermost in many of our thoughts, best conference ever, planning is already underway to innovate already several months overdue and fuelling progressively with formats and open our doors to a wider range of more insular political and public debate in the UK. As I sociologists – not least to build on the success of our conference write this, 10 weeks into the Covid­19 crisis in the UK, for A-Level teachers last November and strengthen our ties with Brexit is barely mentioned, Wuhan has become a globally A-Level students. known city and comparative analysis of government public In the meantime, do let us know about how life is changing health policies around the world a topic of public conversation. during Covid – sociologically and for sociologists – and Our understanding of both points in time – and indeed the remember that we are always keen to publish members’ wider connections between them - is immeasurably enriched by news, reflections and short research pieces on our website: sociological analysis. Last August, we were delighted to co-host www.britsoc.co.uk a joint session with the ESA on ‘Populism, Nationalism and – Susan Halford Brexit’ at their Conference in Manchester (https://es.britsoc.co.uk/3000-sociologists-in-manchester-for- the-14th-european-sociological-association-conference). What BSA Charitable Objectives a pleasure to be with 3000+ sociologists from all over Europe (and many from way beyond) at that time, reminding us of our The advancement of public education by the promotion and diffusion ties and the power of our collaborative efforts. of the knowledge of sociology by lectures, publications, the Today, the feeling of such a gathering is almost impossible to promotion and publication of research and the encouragement of recall. However, faced with the inevitability of cancelling our contact between workers in all relevant fields of enquiry. own Annual Conference as the Covid-19 crisis worsened, I was truly proud to see the BSA and our members rally online during Core Values and Objectives (what would have been) conference week. The week’s events continued through a variety of channels, culminating in a 1. Promote sociology marvellous online symposium focussing sociological attention • Promote sociology as an academic discipline that aims to improve on ‘Sociology and the Crisis’. From medical sociology, to understanding of society and social processes through research, sociologies of race and racism, mobility, technology and the teaching and public engagement. analysis of inequalities: the reach of sociological insight was • Encourage sociologists to take part in debates and make an impact there to see. It is notable, that since UKRI schemes for rapid on important societal issues, where appropriate. response Covid funding began, the Economic and Social • Provide a strong and well‐respected voice at relevant major policy Research Council has (as reported unofficially) seen the largest and funding platforms in the UK. number of applications of all Research Councils. I cannot say • Offer an effective and regular presence in the conventional media, that these are all from Sociologists – but I wouldn’t be in social media, and through an effective website, full of useful and surprised! current resources. Like many other organizations, the BSA has been hit by Covid, •Develop strong and collaborative working partnerships with cognate incurring financial losses from cancelling conference, which national and international organizations and associations. only adds to the looming challenge of Plan S, which will impact significantly on income from our journals. But we are a robust 2. Support sociologists organization, with sound mitigation strategies in place. Our • Be the natural home of researchers and teachers of sociology in the Study Groups have already organizing some great online events UK and the first port of call for anyone seeking advice or information www.britsoc.co.uk/events and the BSA Medical Sociology about sociology in the UK. Conference will host a series of events during conference week • Provide information about the discipline of sociology in the UK and 09/09/2020 – 11/09/2020. useful and current resources for both members and external users. On that footing we are confident in looking forward to • Offer a broad programme of events, including high‐profile public events. • Strengthen links with schools and colleges and sociologists outside of academia. • Support sociologists at all stages of the career spectrum (with particular focus on early careers in the period 2017‐2019).

3. Sustain the British Sociological Association • Act as the UK’s national subject association for the discipline of sociology. • Develop the range and quality of publications. • Diversify financial resources. • Maintain effective, stable and motivated staff, trustees and volunteers. Because of the lockdown, the BSA is publishing online here its annual review of its activities rather than in print

Chair’s Report owards the end of last year experience of those who have tragically lost family and friends in TI’m sure that many of us felt recent months. that we were experiencing a For the BSA the key issues have been financial, organisational period of tumultuous upheaval, with the impending and, of course, social. Undoubtedly, one of the most disappointing departure from the EU and with the UK seeming irreconcilably aspects of this scenario for us thus far arose when, in early March, divided between those eager to push Brexit over the line and we had to regretfully take the difficult decision to cancel our those who had been holding on to fading hopes for a last annual conference. While in retrospect this may seem minute reprieve. At that point the HE sector had also embarked straightforward, at that time the course of the pandemic seemed upon a protracted period of strike action supported by less certain. We were in a position of having to make the call, as members across the country. However, even these hugely payment deadlines for conference contracts were coming due, but significant events, as we now know, were about to be dwarfed where we still had some residual concerns that we might be by the pandemic that was already waiting in the wings. jumping the gun. The pace at which events unfolded, however, Needless to say that all of this taken together has presented the meant that within a week or so the decision seemed inevitable. BSA trustees and staff with very considerable challenges, as has Aside from the financial impact on the BSA of cancelling the 2020 evidently been the case for many at this time, albeit that what we conference, our greatest regret here was in losing the opportunity have had to deal with evidently in no way approaches the that all of us look forward to in getting together with colleagues and friends for lively debate and, of course socialising. Following from this, we were also left with little option but to cancel other Strategic priorities 2017‐2019 key events in the calendar. While all of the above has concentrated the mind in recent • Increase number of academic sociologists with membership. months, we have been very concerned to take timely and practical • Increase number of senior members of the profession with steps to mitigate damage to the Association wherever possible, as membership. well as to plan for a positive way forward. The swift organisation • Broaden membership base further beyond academia. of online alternatives to the conference appear to have been very • Develop and implement database of sociologists to champion well received by members, and are testament to the creativity and sociology. resilience of the BSA staff in responding to these challenges, as • Develop regional mentoring cafes for early career researchers. well as to the proactive input of the various members and • Develop and implement strategy to address diversity within BSA. contributors who helped make this programme of events a • Develop public engagement initiatives including social media success. As is the case in many of our institutions, this has been a • Develop the journals. steep learning curve, while there have been some positives that • Explore property purchase to house the BSA office. will feed into future events. • Promote and facilitate legacies and donations. On that point, and looking beyond the BSA’s internal operations, there will be a number of opportunities as well as challenges presented as we move towards the much discussed ‘new normal’. Organisational details As with all traumatic events, amidst their downsides, such instances also regularly present us with opportunities for reassessment of where we are and where we’re going, crucially The British Sociological Association allowing us to pause and to reflect upon and confront the is a Company Limited by Guarantee: maladies and injustices around us and to imagine a more positive Registered in England and Wales. way forward. As we know, persistent tensions and gross Company Number: 3890729 inequalities in our societies have been starkly demonstrated in It is also a Company Limited by Guarantee: recent weeks and months, together with evidence of a Registered Charity Number: 1080235 groundswell of desire for progressive change on a number of VAT Registration Number: 734 1722 50 fronts. It also seems likely that there will also be a contest between those of us who want to see that progressive change as Registered office: we emerge from the current crisis and those intent on restoring Chancery Court, Belmont Business Park, Durham, DH1 1TW the status quo. The BSA intends to be proactive in this regard, not Tel: 0044 (0)191 383 0839 least by pushing forward with our equality and diversity agenda, E‐mail: [email protected] confronting widening Website: www.britsoc.co.uk insecurities and challenging a return to BSA Publications Ltd austerity, while is a subsidiary of The British Sociological Association. advancing a Registered in England and Wales. sociological Company Number: 01245771 perspective on what Registered Offices: same as Charity. looks likely to be a VAT Registration Number: 416 961 great debate around how we might shape © 2020 BSA Publications Ltd. our future. The Annual Review continues on the next six pages – John Bone Publications n alignment with the BSA’s the BSA is that it will likely reduce the income we receive from our Igoals – to promote sociology, journals. For our UK members, an open access sales deal may have support sociologists and one major advantage: the ability to publish open access in established ensure the sustainability of the BSA – the publications team’s reputable journals without having to pay extra for the privilege, as first priority is to develop the journals. It has been an long as your institution is participating in these sales deals. eventful year for our four journals, with all achieving record There is, however, a down side: the threat this poses to high impact factors: Sociology (2.817); Work Employment and intellectual property and academic integrity under the proposed Society (2.364); Sociological Research Online (1.181) and licensing system. Most open access supporters are insisting on the Cultural Sociology (1.239). During the year we issued a call most permissive form of copyright licence, CC-BY, which allows for and appointed a new editorial team for Sociological for ‘adapting, remixing, transforming and building upon’ the work Research Online. We would like to express our thanks to the for any, including commercial, purposes. The BSA, along with outgoing editors, Charlie Walker (University of other learned societies in the social sciences and humanities, has Southampton), Steven Roberts (Monash University) and contested this at every point but the battle has been lost as far as Sanna Aaltonen (University of Eastern Finland). journal articles are concerned, though books may not be subject Throughout 2019 the journals published several special issues to the same conditions. The one proviso, of which members and held a number of events. For example, Work Employment and should be made aware, is that a case can be made, on an article by Society sponsored a symposium ‘Worlds of Work: Implications of article basis, for a CC-BY-ND licence (which prevents adapting, Urbanisation, Technology and Sustainability’ at the University of remixing and transforming). The BSA continues to promote the Hong Kong to develop international connections, while Sociology use of exceptions on licences in policy and to encourage all hosted a successful session at the BSA Annual Conference on members to look into licencing so that they are aware of their ‘Migration and Crisis in Europe’. The editors of Cultural Sociology options and implications. These OASDs are likely to be in place for represented the journal at the ASA and ESA conferences and held the 2020 calendar year, so authors should be alert to this a panel at the Latin American Sociological Association showcasing possibility (and the risk of the default CC-BY licence) for any innovative work on elites in Mexico and Chile. The journals are articles accepted for publication from now on. also making use of social media to promote their work, for instance with Sociology producing three podcasts. The BSA currently publishes a variety of academic books and Each year the publisher SAGE, awards a prize for an innovative journals. We thank the many people who contribute their and/or excellent article in each of the journals. The 2019 winners time to these publications, including editors, board members, were: peer reviewers and our publishing partners: SAGE, Policy • Sociology: Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss, and Kathryn Press and Routledge. Cassidy for ‘Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Reorientation of British Immigration Legislation’ Cultural Sociology (published by SAGE) • Work Employment and Society: Jill Rubery, Damian Grimshaw, Impact Factor: 1.239 Arjan Keizer and Mathew Johnson for ‘Challenges and Board Members: 31 Editorial Board members, Contradictions in the ‘Normalising’ of Precarious Work’ 29 International Advisory Board members • Cultural Sociology: Varvara Kobyshcha for ‘How Does an Issues per year: 4 – March, June, September, December Aesthetic Object Happen? Emergence, Disappearance, Multiplicity’ • Sociological Research Online: Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad for Sociological Research Online (published by SAGE) ‘The Amazing Bounce-Backable Woman: Resilience and the Impact Factor: 1.181 Psychological Turn in Neoliberalism’ Board members: 28 Editorial Board members, In addition to the journals, we saw new titles published in both 29 Associate Board Members our book series. Money, by Mary Mellor, is the latest in our 21st Issues per year: 4 – March, June, September, December Century Standpoints series, while four books were published in the Sociological Futures series: Climate Change and Sociology (published by SAGE) Intergenerational Justice by Tracey Skillington; Social Beings, Impact Factor: 2.817 Future Belongings: Reimagining the Social, edited by Anna Board members: 30 Editorial Board members, 30 Associate Tsalapatanis, Miranda Bruce, David Bissell and Helen Keane; Board members,15 International Advisory Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging, edited by Sadia Habib and Board members Michael RM Ward; What is Food? Researching a Topic with Many Issues per year: 6 – February, April, June, August, October and Meanings, edited by Ulla Gustafsson, Rebecca O'Connell, Alizon December Draper and Andrea Tonner. The publications team have also been much preoccupied with Work, Employment and Society (published by SAGE) ongoing developments in open access publishing associated with Impact Factor: 2.364 Plan S (see Network Summer 2019), which originally proposed Board members: 31 Editorial Board members, 35 Associate that all articles derived from publicly funded research must be Board members, 28 International Advisory published in open access journals by January 2021. These Board members proposals have altered since and have received varying support; Issues per year: 6 – February, April, June, August, October, however, they have reenergised the move towards open access December publishing, with consortia of institutional libraries (mainly in the US, UK and Europe) putting pressure on publishers to offer open Sociological Futures Book Series (Routledge) access publishing without significant extra costs. Most British and Volumes published in 2019: European based journals, including those of the BSA, are now • Climate Change and Intergenerational Justice, by Tracey constrained to move towards open access. Throughout 2019 we Skillington engaged in significant discussion, analysis and representation on • Social Beings, Future Belongings: Reimagining the Social, edited by the effects this could bring for the BSA and for Sociology as a Anna Tsalapatanis, Miranda Bruce, David Bissell, Helen Keane discipline. We worked on with the UKRI to contribute to their • Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging, edited by Sadia Habib, open access review, which will result in their new policy for Michael RM Ward research council funded research and also have implications for • What is Food? Researching a Topic with Many Meanings, edited by the REF-after-REF 2021. This will have major implications for Ulla Gustafsson, Rebecca O'Connell, Alizon Draper, Andrea Tonner both the BSA and our members. This is being managed at present, during a period of transition, through Open Access Sales Deals 21st Century Standpoints Book Series (Policy Press) (OASDs) between institutional library consortia and journal Volumes published in 2019: publishers, in the BSA’s case, SAGE. The major impact of this on • Money by Mary Mellor Public Engagement s the public face A list of public A of sociology in engagement activities Britain, the BSA engages in a number of activities to promote the discipline Academy of Social Sciences Facilitating representation at key strategic beyond academia and showcase the value of BSA membership. meetings and events In 2019-20, the BSA organised a number of high profile, and well- BSA Sixth Form Prize Providing funding, promotion and received events. In partnership with the British Library, the BSA facilitation of pre-tertiary award hosted the ninth annual Equality Lecture – delivered by Jack Halberstam, Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia BSA Feminism Event Providing funding, promotion and University, entitled ‘ Trans* – Beyond a Politics of Recognition’, still facilitation of pre-tertiary activity available for viewing : www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZa9VqZVibc BSA Discover Sociology Providing funding, maintenance and Supporting our sociology teacher colleagues and making sure that promotion of satellite website which they are introduced to the latest sociological research is a main supports pre-tertiary sociology BSA Everyday Society Launching a new digital platform for short articles objective. Alongside the annual feminism lecture for schools in East on current sociology to extend the reach of sociological research to the public, government London, in November 2019, the BSA delivered a highly successful bodies and beyond teacher conference – ‘The State of the Art’ – held in London with BSA Research Project Providing funding, promotion and support for over 100 delegates. The enthusiasm and support for this offer, and research on race, ethnicity and sociology considering that sociology is the eight most popular A-level (fifth teaching provision in British universities most popular for young women), means that the BSA is committed BSA Teacher Conference Providing funding, promotion and facilitation of event for pre-tertiary teachers to continue working in this area – supporting teachers and promoting sociology to the next generation. BSA Discover Sociology Providing funding, maintenance and The BSA schools prize is another way to engage students with the promotion of satellite website which supports pre-tertiary sociology BSA. This year a record number of high calibre entries were received AQA UK Awarding Body Supporting relationship development with and it was pleasing to see that school-based sociology is fostering this pre-tertiary sociology exam board the sociological imagination in creative ways, with students able to including encouraging knowledge exchange apply their knowledge to contemporary social life – the winning British Academy Providing BSA Fellow candidate entry tackled issues of polarisation, identity and politics in their suggestions discussion of Brexit. British Library Providing joint funding, promotion and An important role of the Association is to represent the discipline facilitation of Annual Equality Lecture (Jack in both academic and broader public environments. We would like Halberstam – 2019) British Library Partnering with the BL on the BSA Postgraduate to thank the many individual members who gave their time and Fellowship for Sociology at the British Library, including energy during the year to contribute to consultations, represent the joint funding, development, fellow recruitment and supervision, and promotional activities BSA at strategic events and respond to requests for support and Campaign for Social Science Supporting the campaign with a collaboration from allied organisations. Outward-facing public financial donation engagement activities in 2019 included the following see table, right Discover Society Supporting this independent, online magazine including free circulation to BSA mailing list and free space at the Annual Conference Economic and Social Responding to consultation on researcher Communications activities development and leadership in the social Research Council sciences Website Encyclopaedia of Higher Contributing article for book published by Education SAGE This year saw page views reaching over 709,000 during the course of the year – a 43% increase in traffic from last year. The most European Sociological Providing funding, promotion and popular pages were our events pages and What Is Sociology section. Association facilitation of joint ESA-BSA event relating to Brexit European Sociological Facilitating staff knowledge exchange Press Association between ESA and BSA In 2019 the Media Consultant, Tony Trueman, issued 12 press releases (23 in 2018) and took around 35 enquiries from the media. Government Brazil Publishing open letter in support of Directly as a result of the press releases, the BSA was mentioned in Brazilian sociology departments the following media: Government China Publishing open letter in support of freedom for students to peacefully protest

Media type Number in 2019 2018 Government UK Facilitating sociological contributions to National newspapers and websites 12 13 ONS consultation to review how to measure human capital in the UK National radio 1 2 International media online 9 6 Government UK Seeking and submitting feedback on the REF process Specialist media online 22 26 Local radio 0 0 Government UK Providing impact case study examples to Local media websites 0 0 Academy of Social Sciences Lobbynomics Magazines 0 1 initiative Total 44 47 Government UK Providing funding, promotion and facilitation of event on higher education policy – impacts of the marketization of HE The national media included The Observer, The Independent, the OCR UK Awarding Body Supporting relationship development with this pre- Daily Mirror and The Telegraph. tertiary sociology exam board including facilitating contact with Sociology lead and encouraging knowledge exchange Network and social media Open Access activities Contributing to discussions and In 2019 Tony edited three issues of Network with a total of 132 consultations about Plan S pages, around 80,000 words. Tony sub-edited or wrote all of the Research Excellence Seeking and submitting nominations for 140 articles and laid out the magazine. He wrote in-depth pieces Framework (REF) 2021 REF panel representatives on: empathy among sociology students; the challenge of Brexit; the BSA’s first event in Whitehall; the challenge of open access; Sociological Research Supporting this sister organisation by writing an article on Plan S for their and PhD students’ experiences. During the first half of the year, Association members’ magazine Tony issued over 2,000 tweets/retweets, 120 Facebook posts and University and College Union Maintaining ‘radio silence’ during the strike 100 LinkedIn posts. period in solidarity with members affected strike engagement by the strike embership 2019 was a year Reproduction Annual Conference, with 24 delegates. The Biennial Membership Mof many challenges for Food Study Group Conference took place in Italy at Monash members; looking forward, University, Prato, although it experienced a drop in numbers from things now look even more complex and uncertain. As was the case 120 in 2017 to 66. The largest study group annual conference is in 2018, we saw many members, although not all, affected by that organised by the Medical Sociology study group. In 2019 their industrial action, this time over both pay and pensions, while many annual conference was held at York, again with a small drop in of us are also managing competing demands over different higher numbers from 320 to 275; nevertheless, it remains an important education metrics. These contexts have affected membership annual activity for medical sociologists who often find themselves numbers as people have struggled with the financial implications working outside sociology units. Two new study groups held their of strike activity and, particularly those who are early career first events, the New Materialisms study group and the academics, precarious employment contracts. Post/Decolonial Transformations study group. We continued to The total number of members in 2019 was 2288, this reflects a receive and support a high number of applications for reduction of 410 people during the year, after membership peaked postgraduate forum regional events (20 applications and 14 in 2017 with 2,759 members. Our retention of members is also funded) and early career forum regional events (11 applications dropping, now standing at 62%, which is lower than the past 3 and 8 funded). years. We do need to ensure we are serving members well and by A range of events ran in 2019, which were focused on bringing doing so also support the discipline. It is important we are there sociological ideas to different communities outside of academia. for members at different stages of their career: from those at the The final Equality Lecture was held at the British Library. The early stages of their careers in an ever intensifying job market, to event began in 2011 and has proved to be very popular, over the those mid-career academics often shouldering the biggest last 9 years over 1000 people have attended. At this year’s lecture, management roles, alongside care responsibilities in their own given by Professor Jack Halberstam, we had over 130 delegates. We lives, and finally senior sociologists working to both move debates are discussing what we would like to replace this with going forward and also support those at earlier stages in their careers. forward and appreciate still our long association with the British Mentoring is one area of work for members that has increased. Library. The British Library also hosted the Sociology in the Mentoring at the annual conference in 2019 generated extremely Archives event, at which over 50 attendees were told about the positive feedback from those who participated and we are very race and ethnicity research that can be supported by the materials grateful for the members who gave their time to work with early held in the library. Finally, we held two events for schools: the ever career academics. We know that conversations that began there popular Annual Feminism and Sociology event for pupils on the continued long after. An area we are looking at is both mentoring 18th December with 70 attendees, and the Presidential one day activities outside of conference opportunities and mentoring for event for teachers with over 60 attendees. Closer ties with both sociologists at different stages of their career. While mentoring is sociology pupils and teachers in schools is a priority area for us only one response to the challenges of contemporary higher going forward. See page right for a list of events education, feedback from members is that it is something they value greatly. Looking ahead, we recognise the need to review both benefits and costs for different categories of membership. This process Prizes he BSA publicly recognises the outstanding began in 2019 and will be ongoing in 2020. It is clear that what we Tcontributions that individual members and work on also needs to factor in the very serious impacts the sociologists make to the discipline in a number coronavirus pandemic is having on members. Very positively, the of ways, including through award schemes. In 2019 the following work of the study groups remains a strong backbone to the awards were conferred: organisation and we are very grateful for all the hard work that group convenors put into their activities. We have 60 Study Groups Distinguished Service to British Sociology Award: and 4 Special Interest Groups, see events section below, and 2019 Professor Alan Warde was as busy as ever for them. National A Level Sociology Competition: Hannah Watkins – Brooke Weston Academy, Corby Events 019 was busy with events run by members, Phil Strong Memorial Prize: 2both within study groups, as well as those Lijiaozi Cheng – University of Sheffield organised by individual members. Supporting groups and members to manage events successfully is BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize: a core activity for membership, trustees and staff. Overall 50 Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Black Mixed­Race Men: Transatlanticity, events took place, from the flagship annual conference, to study Hybridity and 'Post­Racial' Resilience group annual conferences, to regional workshops and symposia, alongside, finally, a range of public facing activities. SAGE Prizes for Innovation and/or Excellence: The Annual Conference at Glasgow Caledonian University did Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss, Kathryn Cassidy see a drop in numbers. In 2018, 715 attended, while in 2019, 660 ‘Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Reorientation of British participated; the pre-conference Postgraduate day also saw a drop Immigration Legislation’ Sociology 52(2): 228 from 31 in 2018, to 17 in 2019. We believe a range of factors contributed to the small drop, but nevertheless we need to work to Rosalind Gill, Shani Orgad, ‘The Amazing Bounce-Backable ensure the conference is a vital opportunity for members to come Woman: Resilience and the Psychological Turn in Neoliberalism’ together – something, clearly, which is now an even bigger Sociological Research Online challenge. Feedback from those who attended the conference was overwhelmingly positive, with a strong sense of collegiality visible Varvara Kobyscha, ‘How Does an Aesthetic Object Happen? in interactions, and a coherence to the programme thanks to the Emergence, Disappearance, Multiplicity’ Cultural Sociology efforts of the Plenary Speakers and the stream coordinators. Beyond the annual conference, the events calendar is made up of Jill Rubery, Damian Grimshaw, Arjan Keizer, Mathew Johnson many different local activities reaching both other sociology ‘Challenges and Contradictions in the ‘Normalising’ of Precarious colleagues and other communities who it is important we engage Work’ Work, Employment and Society with. Thanks to the work of convenors there were 18 successful study group events across the year, including the SocRel Annual Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize: Conference with 77 delegates at Cardiff University, the Bourdieu Katherine A Mason, Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public study group annual meeting, with 29 delegates, and the Human Health After an Epidemic, Stanford University Press Events List

DATE TITLE 25 January BSA Death Dying and Bereavement and Violence and Society Study Groups Joint Event, University of Salford 01 February BSA Human Reproduction Study Group Winter Event; University of the West of England, Bristol 14 February BSA Early Career Forum Regional Event: Cycling Cultures: Insights and Methods MMU, Manchester 01 March BSA Postgraduate Forum Event: ‘These are a few of my favourite things’: Exploring the Value of Material Culture in the Everyday; University of Sheffield 15 March BSA Postgraduate Forum Event: Gender and Working Lives, University of Cambridge 04 April BSA Early Career Forum Regional Event: Theorising Worker‐employer Relations in the New World of Work, Leeds University 05 April BSA Postgraduate Forum Regional Event: Researching(in)equalities at Work, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester 06 April BSA Early Career Event: Symbolic Objects in Contentious Politics, University of Aberdeen 15 April BSA Postgraduate Forum Regional Event: Estranged Students in Post‐compulsory Education: A Sense of Strangeness in Widening Participation, University of Strathclyde 23 April BSA Annual Conference 2019 ‐ Postgraduate Forum Pre‐Conference Day: A Non‐conference, Conference, A day of Self‐care, Glasgow Caledonian University 24 April BSA Annual Conference 2019: Challenging Social Hierarchies and Inequalities, Glasgow Caledonian University 29 April BSA Postgraduate Forum Regional Event: Young Lives in Contemporary Times: Transitions, Challenges and Opportunities, University of Stirling 03 May BSA Early Career Forum Regional Event: Challenging and Changing Institutional Abuses of Power, University of Abertay, Dundee 10 May BSA Postgraduate Regional Event: Dear Diary... Exploring Social Sciences Diary Method Research, Gender and Sexuality Focus, University of Warwick 14 May BSA Postgraduate Forum Event: Girling Feminism, Towards a Feminist Theory of Girlhood, University of Glasgow 14 May BSA Postgraduate Forum Regional Event: Researching Relational Space, Concepts, Methods and Implications, Lancaster University 24 May BSA Alcohol Study Group Event, BSA Meeting Room, London 28 May BSA Early Career Forum Event: Smalltown Boys and Country Girls, Gender and Sexuality Within the Rural Idyll, University of Lincoln 04 June BSA Early Career Forum: Working Interdisciplinarily, Opportunities and Challenges, University of Warwick 10 June BSA New Materialisms Study Group One‐day Symposium, BSA Meeting Room, London 12 June BSA Human Reproduction Study Group Annual Conference 2019, De Montford University, Leicester 13 June BSA Human Reproduction Study Group: International Expert Symposium, Comparative and Transnational Perspectives on Technologies of Fertility Preservation and Extension, De Montford University 14 June BSA Postgraduate Forum Event: Surveillance in the 21st century, From the Mundane to the Spectacular, Royal Holloway University of London 18 June BSA Early Career Forum: Breaking the System, Using Imagination and Hope to Navigate Early Career Academia, BSA Meeting Room, Durham 24 June Sixth BSA Food Study Group Conference: Food Systems & Society 2019, Monash University, Prato, Italy 27 June BSA Postgraduate Forum Regional Event: The Embodied Researcher in Sport, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury 28 June BSA Rethinking Higher Education: Challenging the Values of Market and Performance Criteria, NCVO, London 09 July BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group (SocRel) Annual Conference 2019, Cardiff University 17 July BSA Digital Sociology: Who We Are and What We Are For, BSA Meeting Room, London 05 September BSA Sports Study Group Postgraduate Research Forum, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford 06 September BSA Theory Study Group Event: The Future of Social Theory, BSA Meeting Room, London 06 September BSA Social Work and Sociology Group: Addressing the (Poverty) Elephant – the Role of Social Work and Sociology, University of Birmingham 11 September South West Regional Medical Sociology Group Conference 2019, University of Plymouth 12 September BSA Medical Sociology Annual Conference 2019, University of York 13 September PGR Mental Health Conference, Northumbria University, Newcastle 20 September BSA Youth Study Group Event 2019, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester 27 September Building on Bourdieu in National and International Spaces, Sheffield Hallam University 03 October BSA Postgraduate Regional Event: Gender and Networks, University of Manchester 16 October BSA Food Study Group Talk, University of Plymouth 23 October BSA Visual Sociology Study Group Event, The Bluecoat Museum, Liverpool 25 October BSA Post/Decolonial Transformations Study Group Event, BSA Meeting Room, London 01 November BSA/BL Equality Lecture: Trans* ‐ Beyond a politics of recognition, British Library 08 November BSA Postgraduate Forum Autumn Event: Creating Space in Academia, London School of Economics 14 November BSA Early Career Forum Event: The Listening Guide in Feminist Narrative Research, University of Huddersfield 18 November Sociology in the Archives: Black and Asian Activism by and for Young People, NCVO, London 19 November BSA Presidential Event: The State of the Art, A one‐day event for A‐level Sociology teachers, NCVO, London 20 November BSA Postgraduate Regional Event: Reproduction and Risk, University of Leicester 29 November BSA Consumption Study Group: Rethinking Consumption, BSA Meeting Room, London 05 December Death and Relationships ‐ BSA Social Aspects of Death, Dying and Bereavement Study Group Annual Symposium, University of Sheffield 09 December BSA Risk & Society Study Group Event: Tensions at the Front Line of Risk Work, Implications for Policy and Practice, BSA Meetingoom, R London 18 December BSA Sociology & Feminism 2019, NCVO, London uditors Haines Watts were reappointed he British Sociological Finance for year‐end 31 December 2019. They A Constitution Association (BSA) is an have continued to monitor and enhance T incorporated Association financial controls within the Association. and is registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee and The three principal sources of income for the Association are Not Having a Share Capital under company registration membership subscriptions, annual conference registration fees and number 3890729. The Association holds charitable status publication royalties. The Association is also now generating rental under registration number 1080235. As a charity, the income from tenants occupying the ground floor of the offices in Association controls a trading subsidiary: BSA Durham. This income is used to meet a range of expenditures Publications Limited. BSA Publications Limited publishes connected to the provision of services to members and support for sociological works on behalf of the parent body, the British the wider promotion of sociology. Staff salaries at the BSA office are Sociological Association. the principal financial outlay (the position of Trustee is voluntary and The activities of the BSA are overseen by an elected carries no stipend). Board of Trustees which is made up of ordinary members The year‐end consolidated financial statements for the Association of the Association. The elected members of the Board are in 2019 show a surplus of £113,460 against a surplus budget of the legal Trustees of the Association. Current activities in £33,130. This result is mainly attributable to the success of the any given year are driven and directed by the Board of royalties from the BSA/SAGE journals following the renegotiation of Trustees and supported by an Advisory Forum which contracts at the beginning of 2016, the favourable increase in value represents members across a broad range of of investments and the favourable movement in the pension liability. constituencies. The Board of Trustees is also supported by The financial statements for 2019 include gift aid from BSA a dedicated team of staff based at the Association’s Publications Ltd of £448,818. In 2020, due to the detrimental impact registered offices in Durham. of Covid‐19 the Association is working to a £42,506 deficit budget. – Dr Chris Yuill, Treasurer The Association holds unrestricted reserves of £911,749, sufficient to enable the running down of the Association over a period of one year should members vote to discontinue the Association or it prove no longer (financially or otherwise) viable. Additional reserves are rustees review maintained as designated funds for BSA study groups (£208,157), Risk Management the Association’s property funds (£1,003,532), funds for the strategic priority (£3,529) T objectives and supporting Sociological Research Online and funds to cover further identify the major risks (within and beyond the costs of implementing the new CRM system in 2020 (£9,780). Association’s direct control) to which the charity may be – Dr Chris Yuill, Treasurer exposed, on an annual basis. For the financial year under consideration, a review was undertaken in November 2019 with discussion around a range of risks facing the Income to December 2019 Association. As well as meeting the requirements of charity law, the review provides an excellent basis for forward planning. Long-, medium- and short-term risks identified included the following: IT infrastructure including cyber-security and website functionality; impact of changes to academic publishing, particularly in relation to open access; membership retention and recruitment; conference performance; overseeing the output of contractors with regards to IT, journals and media; changes in Higher Education policy and funding; diversity within the BSA; socio/political climate. More details of the BSA risk register are available on request and are included in the Annual Accounts as part of the Annual Report of the Trustees of the Association. – Dr Chris Yuill, Treasurer

Expenditure to December 2019 Membership by Category, December 31 2019 he BSA thanks all those who gave generously of their time and expertise during the 2019 Acknowledgements T calendar year, serving in many important roles vital to ensure the smooth running of the Association and its many activities.

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Dr Aminu Musa Audu Membership Services Director Prof Nasar Meer Publications Director Dr John Bone Vice Chair / Chair Prof Henrietta O'Connor Membership Services Director Dr Sarah Cant Public Engagement Director Prof Chrissie Rogers Membership Services Director Dr Mark Doidge Membership Services Director Prof Louise Ryan Publications Director / Vice Chair Prof Stevi Jackson Publications Director Prof Michael Savage Public Engagement Director Dr Jieyu Liu Publications Director Dr Richard Waller Publications Director Prof Linda McKie Public Engagement Director Dr Aaron Winter Membership Services Director Prof Janice McLaughlin Membership Services Director Dr Chris Yuill Treasurer

ADVISORY FORUM The Advisory Forum is made up of representatives from many constituencies of the BSA. Where the representatives are not named elsewhere in the Annual Review, we have thanked them here: Activism in Sociology Representative; Chair; Chief Executive; Company Secretary; Cultural Sociology Journal Editors; Early Career Forum Representative; HAPS Chair (Prof John Solomos); Honorary Vice President (Prof John Scott); MedSoc Representative; Membership Services Directors; Postgraduate Forum Representatives; President (Prof Susan Halford); Public Engagement Directors; Publications Directors; Publications & Membership Manager; Sociological Research Online Journal Editors; Sociologists Outside Academia Representatives; Sociology Journal Editors; Study Group Representatives (Dr Mark Doidge, Dr Julie Parsons); Treasurer; Vice Chair; Work, Employment and Society Journal Editors.

HONORARY VICE PRESIDENTS Martin Albrow; Sara Arber; Michèle Barrett; John Brewer; Robert Burgess; Joan Busfield; John Eldridge; John Holmwood; Lynn Jamieson; David Morgan; Geoff Payne; Jennifer Platt; John Scott; Sue Scott (all professors).

EXTERNAL PROFESSIONAL AND SPECIALIST ADVISORS Acamedia, Media Consultant; Anjali Clarke Contracts and Copyright, Publishing Consultant; DMWM, Digital Designer; Ellis Whittam, Health and Safety Advisors; Haines Watts, Auditors and VAT; Natwest, Banking; The Pensions Trust, Pensions Managers; Policy Press, Book Publisher; ProTech, CRM Provider; Routledge, Book Publisher; Ruffer Investments, Investment Fund Managers; SAGE Publications, Journal Publisher; TSG, IT Systems Support; The Access Group, IT Systems Support; UK Engage, Elections Services; Ward Hadaway, Legal Services; Waterstons, Website and IT Support.

STAFF MEMBERS Emma Abotsi, BSA/British Library Fellow; Sophie Belfield, Publications Coordinator; Liz Brown, Membership Development Officer; Sandria Charalambous, Events Officer; Kerry Collins, Company Secretary; Alison Danforth, Publications Manager; Elaine Forester, Events Coordinator; Lyndsey Henry, Events Coordinator; Sophie Jaques, Publications Coordinator; Margaret Luke, PA to the Chief Executive; Gillian Mason, Finance Officer; Judith Mudd, Chief Executive; Jackie Murphy, Administration Assistant; Donna Willis, Digital Content Officer.

STUDY GROUP CONVENORS Ageing, Body and Society: Wendy Martin, Julia Twigg; Animal Human: Rhoda Wilkie; Auto/Biography: Jenny Byrne, Anne Chappell, Michael D A Erben, Carly Stewart; Bourdieu: Jessica Abrahams, Ciaran Burke, Nicola Ingram, Steph Lacey, Amy Stich, Aina Tarabini, Derron Wallace; Childhood Studies: Liam Berriman, Jo Moran-Ellis; Cities: Emma Jackson, Kirsteen Paton; Citizenship: Mastoureh Fathi; Climate Change: Catherine Butler, Emmet Fox, Jessica Paddock, Thomas Roberts, Kathryn Marie Wheeler; Consumption: Emma Casey, Irmak Karademir Hazir, Adrian Leguina, Thomas Thurnell-Read; Deconstructing Donation: Laura Machin; Diaspora, Migration and Transnationalism: Julie Botticello, Paul Dudman, Reza Gholami, Rachel Humphris, Polina Manolova, Lucy Mayblin; Digital: Mark Carrigan, Cristina Costa, Huw Davies, Kate Orton-Johnson, Michael Saker, Christopher Till; Disability: Dieuwertje Dyi Huijg, Sara Ryan, Alison Wilde, Sarah Woodin; Emotions: Julie Brownlie, Mary Holmes, Lisa Kalayji, Fiona McQueen, Lisa Smyth; Families and Relationships: Charlotte Faircloth, Alison Lamont, Katherine Twamley, Julie Walsh; Food: Julie Parsons, Andrea Tonner; Gender and Feminism: Madeline Breeze, Grainne McMahon, Erin Sanders-McDonagh; Happiness: Laura Hyman, Alexandra Jugureanu; Historical and Comparative Sociology: Martin Booker; Human Reproduction: Kylie Baldwin, Cathy Herbrand; Leisure and Recreation: Alan Tomlinson; Medical Sociology: Catherine Coveney, Jennifer Remnant; MedSoc East Midlands: Nicky Hudson; MedSoc Environment and Society: Richard Compton, Nick Fox; MedSoc Ethnic and Religious Minorities: Zahira Latif; MedSoc London: Oliver Bonnington, Lorelei Jones; MedSoc North East: Bethany Bareham, Rebecca Patterson, Holly Standing; MedSoc North West: Donna Bramwell; MedSoc Scotland: Suzanne Grant, Shona Hilton, Sara Macdonald; MedSoc South Coast: Chris Allen, Shadreck Mwale; MedSoc South West: Gayle Letherby; MedSoc Wales: Julie Latchem-Hastings; MedSoc West Midlands: Geraldine Brady; MedSoc Yorkshire: Paul Bissell, Barry Gibson, Christopher Till; New Materialisms: Pam Alldred, Fay Dennis, Nick Fox; Postcolonial and Decolonial Transformations: Gurminder Bhambra, Ali Meghji, Saskia Papadakis, Sara Salem, Meghan Tinsley; Race and Ethnicity: Narzanin Massoumi, Sweta Rajan-Rankin, Rima Saini; Risk and Society: Gemma Mitchell, Joanne Warner; Science and Technology Studies: Julia Swallow, Ros Williams; Scottish Studies: Dominic Duckett, Paul Gilfillan, Alex Law; Social Aspects of Death, Dying and Bereavement: Julie Ellis, Sharon Mallon, Laura Towers; Social Network Analysis Group: Alessio D'Angelo, Paola Tubaro; Social Statistics: Charlotte Brookfield, Stefanie Doebler, Jennifer Hampton, Aneta Piekut; Social Work: Rosie Buckland, Rachel Hughes, Louise Isham; Sociology of Alcohol: Laura Fenton, Katherine Jackson, Claire Markham, Samantha Wilkinson; Sociology of Education: Nicola Ingram, Jon Rainford, Michael Ward; Sociology of Media: Julian Matthews; Sociology of Mental Health: Andi Fugard, Nick Manning, Rich Moth, Ewen Speed; Sociology of Religion: Celine Benoit; Sociology of Rights: Martin Crook, Michele Grigolo, Hannah Miller, Alice Nah, Damien Short; Sociology of Sport: Mark Doidge, Aarti Ratna; Sociology of the Arts: Katherine Appleford; Sociology, Psychoanalysis and Psychosocial: Julian Manley, Caroline Pelletier, Peter Redman, Julie Walsh; Theory: Matt Dawson, Charles Masquelier, Susie Scott; Violence against Women: Louise Livesey; Violence and Society: Anthony Ellis; Visual Sociology: Julia Everitt, Terence Heng, Helen Lomax, Daryl Martin; Work, Employment and Economic Life: Rachel Cohen, Jonathan Preminger, Jill Timms; Youth: Benjamin Hanckel, Karenza Moore, Caitlin Nunn.

SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP CONVENORS Activism in Sociology: Rumana Hashem, Spyros Themelis, Tom Vickers; Applied Sociology: J K Tina Basi, Nick Fox; Early Careers Forum: Sarah Burton, Kasia Narkowicz, Carli Rowell; Postgraduate Forum: Kate Haddow, Gaby Harris, Owen McGill, Lauren O’Connell, Emma Seddon; Teaching Group: Patrick Robinson.

BSA PUBLICATIONS CONTRIBUTORS 21st Century Standpoints Series Editors: Prof Les Back, Prof Pamela Cox, Prof Nasar Meer; Cultural Sociology Advisory Editors: Prof David Inglis (Advisor), Dr Lisa McCormick, Prof Nick Prior, Dr M. Angélica Thumala Olave; Sociological Futures Series Editors: Prof Eileen Green, Prof John Horne, Dr Caroline Oliver, Prof Louise Ryan; Sociological Research Online Editors: Dr Karen Lumsden (Chair), Dr Sanna Aaltonen, Dr Steven Roberts, Dr Charlie Walker; Sociology Editors: Prof Tim Strangleman (Chair), Dr Andy Balmer, Prof Bridget Byrne, Prof Tarani Chandola (Co-Editor-in-Chief), Dr Simin Fadaee, Dr Helen Holmes, Dr Vanessa May (Co-Editor-in-Chief), Dr Petra Nordqvist, Prof Alan Warde (Co-Editor-in-Chief); Work, Employment and Society Editors: Prof Irena Grugulis (Chair of the Editorial Board), Dr Maria Adamson, Dr Alexandra Beauregard, Dr Uracha Chatrakul Na Ayudhya, Dr Nick Clark, Dr Elizabeth Cotton (Co-Editor-in-Chief), Dr Anne Daguerre, Dr Alessio D’Angelo, Dr Janroj Keles, Prof Eleonore Kofman (Co-Editor-in-Chief), Prof Suzan Lewis (Co-Editor-in-Chief), Dr Daniela Lup, Dr Ian Roper (Co-Editor-in-Chief). NETWORK Summer 2020

Each racism has its own ‘language – I understood the language of British There was one incident of a racism fluently, I’d ‘senior member of staff grown up with it and I being very rude to a junior knew what to listen for colleague of colour and and how to navigate it, being dismissive of the but in America I had to importance of the sociology learn a new language of people of colour’ ’ I believe sociology, and academia more ‘generally, and the world of work beyond that, will need to change in the future, as this pandemic has shown how unsustainable and unequal some of our models of working have become’

Magazine of the British Sociological Association Registered Charity (no. 1080235) Company Limited by Guarantee (no. 3890729)

Network is published three times a year: Spring Summer Autumn

ISSN: 1742-1616

Available online to members: www.britsoc.co.uk