Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
Misunderstanding Markets – the Failure of UK Economic Policy
Have sociologists better understood some of Adam Smith’s cautions than have economists?
Encounters with (Constitutional) Monarchy
Robert Dingwall notes he never met the late Queen Elizabeth. He did, however, once try to bar Charles’s entry to the Cambridge Union Debating Society…
The International Sociological Association Should Be Ashamed of Its President
ISA may not have any great love for the richer countries of the world, argues Robert Dingwall, but its president should be capable of telling the difference between mutual aid among sovereign nations and a desire to subject other countries to external domination.
King Canute and the Cult of Zero Infection
The humility of King Canute in the face of nature is worth recalling as a check on the enthusiasm for zero-infection. It is a fine-sounding slogan but do we really want to live in a society where everything else is sacrificed to this goal?
The Meaning of the Platinum Jubilee
Robert Dingwall recalls the observations of Edward Shils and Michael Young regarding to coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to offer an insight in the Platinum Jubilee.
Pandemic Management – The Path Not Taken
New data from the WHO show that during the pandemic’s first two years, Sweden had half the excess death rate of the UK, Germany or Spain – and a quarter of the excess death rate of many countries in Eastern Europe.
The Science Media Centre at 20
The UK’s Science Media Centre (SMC) is an internationally admired, and occasionally emulated, model for facilitating interactions between the science community and […]
Not Rewriting the History of the Pandemic
As we pass two years from the beginnings of the pandemic, many commentators are scrambling to distance themselves from their initial responses, […]
