Phil's Blog

1.Mad Dogs   Like most of you, I have been following the public debate about the EU referendum  with   horrified fascination  and growing anxiety. Listening to the claims and counter-claims of the Remainders and Brexiteers reminded me of that  famous opening verse of Yeats' poem ‘The Second Coming’ written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War: Things fall … [Read more...] about Mad Dogs and Englishmen : The EU referendum and its Other Scene

When  Language is Affordance Enough   It began with a hand clenched experimentally to ear not so much a fist as a makeshift mouthpiece designed to broadcast  miracles speaking in tongues:   ‘habari,kangarooshni ,slapit nego,nego,unulti possum! craaghi ipsit cunnilingo ? es krampit   todo   kwa heri ‘   a polyglot  mother … [Read more...] about A Poem for all seasons

The well known nursery rhyme flashed into  my mind as I pitched forward onto the wet pavement, instinctively putting my right hand out to break my  fall. No it was’nt a serious as the  Black Death, but neither was the searing pain in my right shoulder a benign memento of a children’s counting out game,  to take the two dominant interpretations of  Ring a Ring of Roses nursery … [Read more...] about Atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down : Some seasonal reflections on body politics

Text of a talk given to the Michael Young Centenary Conference November 11 2015 Introduction As this event is taking place , by no coincidence, on Remembrance Day , it might be appropriate to start with a personal reminiscence.  I first met Michael Young (hereinafter referred to as MY) in 1963 when he came to Cambridge to give a talk to the Heretics Society, of which … [Read more...] about Through Thick and Thin : On Public Sociology

Reflections on the labour leadership election So, against all the odds, he did it. Jeremy  Corbyn’s victory is already being claimed as an     ‘insurgency’  on the scale of the SNP advance in Scotland, and driven by much the same popular discontent with  austerity economics and ‘business as usual ‘ neo-liberal politics. The campaign’s success is being widely interpreted as … [Read more...] about And now for something completely different