Seeking the Principles of Power and Danger

                    From The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and  Quentin Fiore.

A view from my desk, notice spatial disorganization and inspirational quotes.  Fellow PhD candidate, Alexander Page , over at his new blog ‘Sociology as Self-Defence’ has written a blog post on sociology as embodiment and elaborated for us what he thinks constitutes a good sociologist and how he endeavours to embody that normative standard.   I thought I’d write a parallel post on what I think about the practice of sociology and how I employ my time as a first year PhD candidate. Throughout my undergraduate degree I’d too receive the same snide remarks about the economic value of doing a B.A. and majoring in sociology (all my sibling went into the physical and medical sciences, and I cop the periodic jibes about who is going to be the real doctor).   I didn’t respond that I wanted to be a professional activist, which, even though I’m aware of thesis eleven, sounds a little too vanguardist, as if you should prioritize political ideals over the pursuit of an ...

Lyric from  Bob Dylan's 'It's Alright Ma (I'm only Bleeding) '.

A couple of weeks ago I read Murakami's ' Norwegian wood '  which centers around a young student Toru Watanabe dealing with social isolation in Tokyo, the loss of a close fiend and his connections with two young women.  It's a very beautiful novel. I especially enjoyed all the little humorous, emotional or salacious side stories told by Midori and Reiko that pepper the novel alongside the main plot line. It's easy to see how this novel, which is supposedly unlike his others, captured the imagination of Japanese youth in the 'lost decade'.  Anyways, I found this BBC documentary about the author and I thought I would share it here. 

Marshall Mcluhan on an Australian television program discussing the affect of different forms of communication (television, radio and print) on the structure of human awareness.

I’ve previously mentioned the existence of my honours thesis ( here , here and here ) and the possibility that I might place it in the eternal cloud known as the internet. Well I've finally gotten around to doing just that and you can find Discerning Knowers: An Exploratory Study of University Students’ Perceptions of Knowledge Claims: here .  To get an idea of what it's all about, the abstract is as follows: The thesis is centred on how University students perceive the legitimacy of knowledge claims.  Contemporary sociological theory is often concerned with the transformations associated with the emergent “ knowledge economy ” and “knowledge society”. In view of this, University students’ perception of knowledge claims is of practical concern due to their future role as knowledge-workers and potential members of the power elite.  To address these issues, elements of Social Realism , Legitimation Code Theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics have been d...

  The thought of all dead French theorists weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.