RIP Stuart Hall

[articul8]

I don't know about that. Even Bourdieu sails close to it, IMO.

But ta for the links - so much to read

 

[butchersapron]

I don't know about that. Even Bourdieu sails close to it, IMO.

But ta for the links - so much to read

So much that you didn't know about

 

[malatesta32]

no matter how he fitted in to the 'establishment' he would always be an 'outsider' or a marginalised voice at least for obvious reasons but there is a great advantage to this in that it gives a unique angle to critique that which accepts tho marginalises. in the worst case, the marginalised voice can be asimilated and de-radicalised.

 

[articul8]

So much that you didn't know about

It seems I don't know it all

 

[articul8]

See AMM have denounced him for saying we should "understand" Thatcherism by theorizing the working class as racist and sexist. Off the mark this time.

 

[butchersapron]

See AMM have denounced him for saying we should "understand" Thatcherism by theorizing the working class as racist and sexist. Off the mark this time.

He didn't. He so didn't.

 

[ViolentPanda]

RIP - One of Britain's few great post war intellectuals.

It was something he wrote that first allowed me to grasp Foucault's "power/knowledge" idea

How are "social sciences" more intellectually rigorous? On the contrary, they are stuck in positivism and empiricism. The problem is that the critical moment in cultural studies got lost and it gave way all too easily to affirmative postmodernism - but arid sociology had (and has) nothing more to offer. Not Hall's fault, but still...

Yes, social sciences are so mired in positivism and empiricism that the whole turn to critical social sciences never became a rooted field from which a lot of important work has been produced.

Nope, it's all about quantitative data, falsifiability and scientism.

 

[ViolentPanda]

How much modern historical sociology have you read by the way?

Very little, by the look of it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

dp

 

[articul8]

so shit you posted it twice

 

[ViolentPanda]

Did he leave Oxford for Open Uni? i got the impression he did, but may have misunderstood that.

He did. He was head of faculty (soc sci) for a while. Kicked the arse out of a lot of the OU's soc sci materials and oversaw a massive updating. He also fought the OU's corner in a fair bit of conflict with the DoE.

 

[ViolentPanda]

so shit you posted it twice

What was shit was your "critique" of sociology, which read like something a fuckwit utterly unacquainted with sociology since the late '70s would say.
Love the way you asked ba for an author suggestion - smelled of the "fuck off and google, then come back like you know what you're talking about" gambit.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Astronomer Jocelyn Bell is another top academic who made a point of working for the OU. The exact opposite of the likes of AC Grayling.

yeah, but Grayling is an academic philosopher, one can't expect any better.

 

[TruXta]

yeah, but Grayling is an academic philosopher, one can't expect any better.

Does the OU not employ professional philosophers?

 

[ViolentPanda]

no matter how he fitted in to the 'establishment' he would always be an 'outsider' or a marginalised voice at least for obvious reasons but there is a great advantage to this in that it gives a unique angle to critique that which accepts tho marginalises. in the worst case, the marginalised voice can be asimilated and de-radicalised.

Hall fought hard not to be assimilated, something that was helped by the arrival of people like Paul Gilroy on the soc sci scene in the late '80s.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Does the OU not employ professional philosophers?

Yes, but not ponces like Grayling, and no-one expects too much from them, what with their minds being occupied thinking great and imponderable thoughts.

 

[phildwyer]

It was something he wrote that first allowed me to grasp Foucault's "power/knowledge" idea.

What might that have been then? Hall wrote very little himself.

 

[ViolentPanda]

See AMM have denounced him for saying we should "understand" Thatcherism by theorizing the working class as racist and sexist. Off the mark this time.

Wow, haven't seen such an inaccurate and tabloidesque encapsulation of Hall in a long while. Hall didn't say we should "understand Thatcherism" by "theorising the working class as sexist and racist". His opinion was that to "understand" Thatcherism, people needed to see Thatcherism as viewing the working class as being "racist and sexist". Big difference.

 

[ViolentPanda]

What might that have been then? Hall wrote very little himself.

What he wrote had merit and value, though, unlike so many academics.
It was a contribution to an OU cultural studies textbook, iirc.

 

[nino_savatte]

See AMM have denounced him for saying we should "understand" Thatcherism by theorizing the working class as racist and sexist. Off the mark this time.

No, no, no! *wags finger*. You've completely got that all wrong. Did you get this from the Torygraph obit (is there one?)?

 

[articul8]

Love the way you asked ba for an author suggestion - smelled of the "fuck off and google, then come back like you know what you're talking about" gambit.

err - no, I came back and said I hadn't read him! I've never claimed to be a sociologist - I've always been a bit allergic to the idea of (a certain idea of) sociology after reading Adorno and Gillian Rose. I'm prepared to believe that there's been interesting developments towards a more critical, historical sociology - but it's something I'm not really familiar with.

I'll take author recommendations from all comers. Even you

 

[articul8]

No, no, no! *wags finger*. You've completely got that all wrong. Did you get this from the Torygraph obit (is there one?)?

It's not my view. As I was saying it was the Association of Musical Marxists who are objecting thus:
http://unkant-publishing.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-corpse-of-stuart-hall-and-cultural.html

 

[nino_savatte]

It's not my view. As I was saying it was the Association of Musical Marxists who are objecting thus:
http://unkant-publishing.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-corpse-of-stuart-hall-and-cultural.html

It's still a misrepresentation of what Hall actually said though.

 

[articul8]

yes, I know.

 

[phildwyer]

What he wrote had merit and value, though, unlike so many academics.
It was a contribution to an OU cultural studies textbook, iirc.

I think he was more of a facilitator than an original contributor. Nothing wrong with that of course.

 

[ViolentPanda]

What he wrote had merit and value, though, unlike so many academics.
It was a contribution to an OU cultural studies textbook, iirc.

E2A: one of the course readers for the OU's "Culture, Media and Identities" module, I believe.

 

[articul8]

Yes, social sciences are so mired in positivism and empiricism that the whole turn to critical social sciences never became a rooted field from which a lot of important work has been produced.

Nope, it's all about quantitative data, falsifiability and scientism.

mea culpa - it was an overblown and massively sweeping comment. Bit of reaction to the idea that cultural studies couldn't be intellectually rigorous, and - at its best - more insightful than what had tended to pass for sociology for most of the period before that.

 

[ViolentPanda]

err - no, I came back and said I hadn't read him! I've never claimed to be a sociologist - I've always been a bit allergic to the idea of (a certain idea of) sociology after reading Adorno and Gillian Rose. I'm prepared to believe that there's been interesting developments towards a more critical, historical sociology - but it's something I'm not really familiar with.

I'll take author recommendations from all comers. Even you

Nikolas Rose's "Inventing Our Selves" is interesting (possibly a bit dated in the days of intersectional theory, though).
John Muncie's "Youth and Crime" is good, as well as critical.
If you liked Gillian Rose, you might like Doreen Massey's "Spacial Divisions of Labour".

In keeping with the thread being about Don Stuart Hall, I've given you recommendations from other OU emeritus profs, all of which take a turn to the critical.

 

[ViolentPanda]

mea culpa - it was an overblown and massively sweeping comment. Bit of reaction to the idea that cultural studies couldn't be intellectually rigorous, and - at its best - more insightful than what had tended to pass for sociology for most of the period before that.

Everything tends to boil down to whether or not (IMO) you're open-minded or close-minded. If you're the latter, then nothing but empiricism will ever satisfy you, and therefore social sciences per se will always be a busted flush because of the degree of subjectiveness involved. If you're more open-minded, and are prepared to view social life and social functioning as more contingent and subjective, and therefore not as amenable to empiricism, then you can get an awful lot done. TBF, outside of a return to rigourous empiricism in the social sciences, it's a minority pursuit, even in criminology (where positivism tends to be the research flavour of the day with those criminologists retained and/or funded by the Home Office - I wonder why? ).

 

[malatesta32]

it was the likes of hall and especially hebdige writing about skinheads, punks that were a great way in to 'academic thinking' for the non-academic.