After lunch on Tues 13th I ended up – after being approached by someone who had been at the last session who wanted to recommend “Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery,” - at the second half (i.e. 180 degrees) of a roundtable on “Emerging Research in Environmental Sociology (Part 2)." Of particular... Continue Reading →
Of thinktanks and social movement failure… #isaforum2016
The third day of the International Sociological Association Forum and another jam-packed programme. So jam-packed, in fact, that this blog post covers the morning sessions, with a sequel (the deaths are always more elaborate, the body count higher) to follow. The first session I went to, on Global Think Tanks, was strictly kept to time... Continue Reading →
Kondratiev, Brundtland and everything between… #isaforum2016
The second day of the International Sociological Association Forum was just as good as the first, if even hotter; like a Finnish sauna. It had everything from protest camps to dead Russian economists, academic infighting to open source software for Saving the World. I caught the end of a 0900-1030 session which was on climate... Continue Reading →
Carboniferous capitalism, climate and colleagues – a good day #isaforum2016
Today was the official start of the International Sociological Association Forum. There were four slots for paper presentations before the official welcome and an opening plenary. This blog post gives a (very!) brief summary of some of the highlights that I saw in my travels. I went to the opening session of the Social Movements... Continue Reading →
Attack of the hipster tomatoes! Or “things to do in Vienna when not talking about social movements”
What happens when you get four and a half thousand academics (sociologists and sociologically-minded fellow travellers, to be precise) in one place (the University of Vienna, to be preciser) at one time (10th to 14th July – perciser still)? You get a lot to talk and think about, is what you get. The third “International... Continue Reading →
Bragging: Published in a Routledge collection #activism #climate
Whoop. Whoop. WHOOP!!! I am published!! Emergent Possibilities for Global Sustainability: intersections of race, class and gender, edited by Phoebe Godfrey and Denise Torres, Routledge 2016. Chapter 22 is "Pathological and ineffective activism - what is to be done?" by Marc Hudson and Arwa Aburawa. Whoop!! A physical copy just arrived. It looks fantastic, and... Continue Reading →
Quote-mining Stephen Schneider
The late Stephen Schneider made a careful elucidation of the dilemmas facing those who want to warn about the risk of climate in a 1988 Discover interview, “On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but –... Continue Reading →
Civilising hypocrisies and fundamental questions: on “Emancipating Transformations
Manchester Tyndall Centre today hosted a provocative and highly interesting seminar. Professor Andy Stirling, who spent the 80s in the trenches for Greenpeace, had schlepped up to deliver a seminar on “Emancipating Transformations.” What they? Read on for an (almost) blow by blow account. [My multiple two centses are in square brackets like these.] Stirling... Continue Reading →
The sound of silence: why has the environment vanished from election politics?
Reposted from "The Conversation". Thanks as ever to the very cool editors. There’s a deafening silence in the ongoing Australian election campaign over the environment. Polling shows increasing public support for greater action on climate changebut debate has been mostly missing. And despite some blows traded over the Great Barrier Reef, the wider environment has... Continue Reading →
Failing to meet the Challenge(r) – “Organisational decay”
For reasons we don't particularly need to go into, failure fascinates me. Especially that of individuals and organisations that think they are 'all that.' When life is less "horrible (#firstworldproblems) I want to write about the differences between the 1977 Tenerife disaster and United Airlines 232 in 1989. But for now, this article I read while walking... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 