Recently I’ve been spending my days working frantically on my book, voraciously reading texts for my qualifying exams and—this is the best, and most exciting, part—talking animatedly about potential dissertation ideas with my colleagues. You could say that, after a two-year hiatus, I love sociology again. The only problem is that it took me getting… Continue reading Anomie Soup
At long last, my first peer-reviewed academic publication is available online in the journal Ethnography, at least to those with access to an academic database. I wrote this as my Junior Paper at Princeton, and I have to confess that my thinking on some of these issues has evolved and matured a bit. Still, given… Continue reading In Between Protests, I Also Do Some Sociology
Yesterday, I was beaten, arrested, and jailed for participating in an act of civil disobedience against the privatization of education and criminalization of dissent in California. I’ve spent the last day trying to process what happened, and writing this is an attempt to get it out of my mind and on to paper (having spent… Continue reading Arrested
It is fall and I am back on an American university campus, which can mean only one thing: I am surrounded by undergraduates. It’s most obvious at 9:55 a.m., as I look out the window of my office to see hordes of dazed-looking late-teenagers staggering to class, clutching textbooks and coffee cups. The lampposts on… Continue reading The Strange Species
Here’s a quick primer on how the University of California (and California State University) is completely fucked. This year’s state budget is cutting $650 million from a system already emaciated from a 20% cut last year, with a bonus $200 million in cuts if revenues come short of projections. Tuition has risen 67% for residents… Continue reading UAW Local 2865
Shortly before I left on my cross-country grad-school adventure, I presented a paper at my very first academic conference. Sheffield, where the conference was located, is best known as the location of The Full Monty and as an all-around paragon of a bombed-out post-industrial city, but also has a well-respected university with a strong development… Continue reading Part II: Michigan
There are few places where I will walk around without listening to my iPod. As an undergraduate, even a trip down the hall to the bathroom seemed like a waste of time without earbuds. Even at Oxford, surrounded by spectacular gothic architecture and ever-entertaining undergraduates in fancy dress, my head is still usually engrossed in… Continue reading Part I: Berkeley
When I embarked on my thesis project on freeganism, I envisioned myself as following the model of some of my favourite professors—Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, David Graeber, and Peter Singer come to mind—in combining genuine academic inquiry with a strong commitment to social change. Ít wasn’t enough to just be a neutral observer of a group confronting… Continue reading Promises I Can Keep
There was a time, I imagine, when doing field work in developing countries was legitimately scary. Anthropologists studying remote islands or indigenous tribes might be cut off from contact with their home countries for years. Without the internet or television, their immersion in their place of study was total and non-stop, even in the worst… Continue reading Sink or Swim
As far as I can tell, about three weeks before exams, most Oxford students cease to be human beings. No, really: having an exam within the next month is a universally accepted excuse for abandoning all commitments and getting out of anything, ranging from rowing practice to doing the dishes. Somehow, though, I seem to… Continue reading So, this is learning
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 