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 […]
Sheldon Solomon on Fear of Death
Social psychologist Sheldon Solomon routinely thinks about the unthinkable, studying how humans behave differently when the unthinkable forces its way into their thoughts. In this Social Science Bites podcast, he explains how the fear of death actually propels humankind forward.
Steven Lukes on Durkheim
In this Social Science Bites podcast, social theorist Steven Lukes tells interviewer Nigel Warburton how Émile Durkheim’s exploration of issues like labor, suicide and religion proved intriguing to a young academic and enduring for an established one.
John Brewer on C. Wright Mills
C. Wright Mills was one of the most important sociologists of the 20th century. He believed that sociology could change people’s lives, and that sociologists, far from being neutral, should help bring about such change, and his ideas would fuel ‘60s counter-culture. In this Social Science Bites podcast, John Brewer reveals the full man behind the icon.
Peter Lunt on Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman has been called the most influential American sociologist of the 20th century thanks to his study of the social interactions of everyday life. In this Social Science Bites podcast, social psychologist Peter Lunt discusses his own inquiries into Goffman and how he approached his subjects with “an ethnographer’s eye.”
Trevor Marchand on Craft
It’s an unusual approach for an academic: a hands-on approach. Literally a hands-on approach. Trevor Marchand is an anthropologist interested in how information about crafts is transferred from expert to novice. This has led him to Nigeria, Yemen, Mali, and East London …
Peter Ghosh on Max Weber and ‘The Protestant Ethic’
Max Weber is recognized as a father of modern social science, but his work, developed in pre-World War I Germany, sometimes suffers in translation to today. In the latest Social Science Bites podcast, his pre-eminent interpreter explains how Weber remains relevant.
Linda Woodhead on the New Sociology of Religion
Religiosity has changed for the majority of populations in Britain and the West, and so a new kind of way to study it must arise. In this Social Science Bites podcast, Linda Woodhead discusses the new sociology required to study this nuanced spiritual landscape, and what some of the implications are on the secular world.
Ivor Crewe on Psephology
In this episode of the Social Science Bites podcast series, political scientist Ivor Crewe, the current president of Britain’s Academy of Social sciences and the master of Oxford’s University College, discusses the modern art, and sometime science, of election polling.
