Department of Sociology

By Nigel Gilbert and the GLODERS team “Cape Town: Long Street business owners – who lifted the lid on an apparent security racket – fear for their lives and those of their doormen and patrons if they refuse to pay R1 500 in “protection services” each month … “I was once approached by a company […]

By Rob Meadows   Of fellowship in all-disastrous flight; ‘I suffer mute and lonely, yet another Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother Travels the same wild paths through out of sight’ (The City of Dreadful Night; see Summers-Bremner 2008)   We are a nation of insomniacs. One in four people is dissatisfied […]

By Helen Moore In the weeks and months leading up to the May 2015 general election, numerous public and political commentators expressed unease about the disproportionate amount of press coverage and TV air-time devoted to UKIP and its leader, Nigel Farage, who used the opportunity to bring his inflammatory and well-rehearsed beliefs about the ‘uncontrolled’ […]

By Sarah Earthy The quote in the title comes from an interview with a middle aged man who had sustained fractures to his leg in a cycling accident: “And they said ‘six weeks in plaster, two weeks of physio’. Now in my stupidity I thought, I really feel stupid saying this, I thought that after […]

By Paul Stoneman By the morning of May 8 2015, the British public had returned a majority Conservative government for the first time in 23 years. No-one saw it coming. A debate has since raged on the accuracy of the polls, and will no doubt continue (see the British Polling Council enquiry here). Just for the […]

By Paul Hodkinson A year ago, I was beginning four months of what, at the time, was called ‘additional paternity leave’. I am hard pressed to remember a more distinctive, enjoyable or fulfilling period in my recent daily life and, as the spring weather has set in this year, have found myself wishing I could […]