8/17: On my way to ASA in Seattle and looking very much forward to seeing y’all there. My paper, with Clayton Childress, is available here.
7/17: SocArXiv is a great new open access repository for social scientists with some amazing sociologists behind the wheel. I’ve started posting preprints there ahead of the full rollout, and so should you. Enjoy!
5/30: I am back from an amazing week at Bergmangårdarna, Ingmar Bergman’s summer estate, where thanks to an award from Uppsala University and the estate I was able to hole up and finish the damn book. It’s on Fårö, which is an island off another island, far far away. I am, it turns out, not allowed to show you any pictures from this really very magical and wonderful place, so I will simply leave this picture of a pile of wool that I found in the woods here for your enjoyment.
5/18: At MMM 2016, ever grateful for this community, and staying in a house dedicated to Gregory Bateson. If you haven’t already, please do take a look at Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
3/30: Yes, it’s kind of an unnecessary detour, but I am very much enjoying reading Renaissance artists’ letters.
“There is no profession – among those that the Most High, in order to manifest His Divine Omnipotence, has infused into the minds of men – in which you may expect less happiness and contentment than in painting. For a painter, before he can attain even a moderate degree of perfection, has to submit to so many drudgeries and toils, that they exceed human credibility. Nor, after so much sweating, may he expect even a little applause unless some wind of favorable fortune turns up to blow him into the harbor. Wherefore it often happens that his life ends in misery and want.”
3/11: At the Swedish biennial sociology conference parties are in castles and there is always assigned seating like at a wedding. There were also songs about sociology and sociology-themed stand-up, including a complicated joke about birth rates that involved puns on letting sleeping dogs lie and kicking a man when he’s down. Demography jokes.
1/21: Together with Anna Lund and Hedvig Gröndal I’m organizing the cultural sociology panels for this year’s Sociologidagarna. Pierre-Michel Menger is one of the keynotes, which is probably gonna be amazing. Get yr abstracts in on time.
1/15: Thanks so much to Art League Houston and especially to Carrie Schneider and Jennie Ash for making Deal or No Deal happen at Charge 2016! A special tip of the hat to Autumn Knight, Stephanie Saint Sanchez, and Cassie Thornton for letting me interview them onstage and for baring their souls; to Kenneth Bailey for his work as the twenty lovely ladies; and to all of the contestants.
1/4: Happy new year! This January I’ll be moving around a bit more than usual – maybe I’ll see you at the second CHARGE convening at Art League Houston? Or maybe at the conference on global art markets in Amsterdam?
10/7: In Florence for the 4th European Colloquium on Culture, Creativity, and Economy, where I’ll talk about a paper Clayton and I are working on about artistic autonomy.