When I first inaugurated this blog, way, way back in the salad days of early 2010, I had a fair range of ideas about why I was doing it. Partly, I thought, it would be a platform on which I could work through ideas, and perhaps tease out conceptual and theoretical questions that I was … Continue Reading
New article published: The journalistic field and the city
I’ve just learned that, surprisingly rapidly, my article ‘The journalistic field and the city: some practical and organizational tales about the Toronto Star’s New Deal for Cities’ has been published in the urban sociology journal City and Community. When I say rapidly, I mean from the point of acceptance. Otherwise, it has been a long … Continue Reading
The ouster of Blockbuster (or, formats dying a slow death)
I’ve been meaning to get this photo off of my camera and post it for a while. At least a year ago, I took a photo of this same Blockbuster outlet (in Crouch End, North London) and the sign read ‘OC BUSTER’. It may or may not be surprising that they’ve simply let their presence … Continue Reading
Doreen Massey interview with Nigel Warburton
A number of peeps have already shared this: spatial theorist Doreen Massey speaks with Nigel Warburton, of Philosophy Bites fame, on spatial theory and why it matters (of course). It’s part of Social Science Bites, a new-ish series made in association with Sage. Two other interviews caught my attention: one with Toby Miller on what … Continue Reading
Stuart Hall film: The Unfinished Conversation
I must have been completely sleeping on this, but a film has been made about Stuart Hall, the Jamaican-born British media and cultural theorist, a key figure in the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, and later, a Professor of Sociology at The Open University (I remember fondly, from my short time there, working in a … Continue Reading
Alison Young seminar this week: Street art and the contemporary city
This week, as part of its Distinguished Visiting Speaker Seminar series, the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research will be hosting Professor Alison Young from the University of Melbourne, who will be speaking on ‘Street Art and the Contemporary City’. In the past I have assigned at least one of Young’s papers in my class The … Continue Reading
New material from the Wittgenstein Archives
Wittgenstein heads out there might be interested to note that the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB) have made available a large numbers of papers and audio-visual materal (approximately 600 items in all) from the Kirchberg International Wittgenstein Symposia from the years 2001-2010, as well as from the Wittgenstein Archives publications series. The … Continue Reading
Hobsbawn reflects on his career at Birkbeck
One point of pride for me being based at Birkbeck is that it was the home of renown Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn for 65 years. Just one month before he passed away, he sat down with David Latchman, the Master of Birkbeck, to discuss the ways in which his research career intersected with the peculiarities … Continue Reading
Interviews and more at Figure/Ground
I’ve just noticed an interesting and relatively new website: Figure/Ground. Originally a personal academic blog, it has now evolved into a student-led collaborative project. The site aims to bring ‘philosophers, historians and critics of media, literature and technology into a conversation’ and to be ‘a virtual salon or coffee house, creating a democratic space for … Continue Reading
Mattern’s account of Media Places conference
When I first heard of the conference Media Places: Infrastructure | Space | Media I thought to myself, ‘how could I have missed hearing about that one!?’ The answer, I soon learned, was very simple: it was invite-only, as good events often necessarily are. Luckily, Shannon Mattern over at her blog Words in Space has … Continue Reading