Political Sociology Is Dead. Long Live Political Sociology?

Trends in Funding for Dissertation Field Research: Why Do Political Science and Sociology Students Win So Few Awards?

Despite the size and growth of political science and sociology relative to other disciplines, political science and sociology graduate students have received a declining share of funding for dissertation field research in recent years. Specifically, political science and sociology students are losing out to competitive applicants from humanities-oriented fields that provide strong training in a...

Understanding generations: political economy and culture in an ageing society.

Sociological understanding of generations can be enhanced by avoiding defining them rigidly as chronological cohorts but rather linking people's accounts of their generational experience with an historically informed political economy. It then becomes possible, for example, to understand the complexity of generational politics. This paper uses data on the 'War Generation' taken from the Exeter ...

A Libertarian Socialist Critique of the Political Sociology of Late Modernity

From Max Weber to Public Sociology

Growing up in a political as well as an intellectual environment, Max Weber not only sought to comprehend the world but also to change it. Arguably, he took Karl Marx’s 11th. Thesis on Feuerbach that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it,” far more seriously than its author. Marx, after all, did not reflect, in any systematic fashion...

The promise of Bourdieusian political sociology

This essay provides an analytical review of David Swartz’s book on Bourdieu’s political sociology. I argue that among its many virtues, the book presents Bourdieu’s ideas in an accessible and synthetic manner, adding clarity to what is a complex and often contradictory theoretical system. In addition to assessing the book’s contributions, I draw inspiration from Swartz’s work to point out some ...