Whilst at my parents’ this evening I was watching the Urdu speaking channel (Geo). During the interview, I noticed a plethora of lexical items which were casually embedded into the Urdu discussion. Now this is nothing new, and bilinguals like me readily ‘play’ with language in this way […]
In praise of … Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the role of education in the reproduction of social inequality challenges Nick Clegg’s belief that he was “lucky” in life. Luck, says the French sociologist, has nothing to do with it. In his seminal work entitled ‘Outline of […]
I’m hoping to start a pilot for my classroom ethnographic study very soon, and Heath and Street’s primer has been an excellent guide to preparation for an ethnographic study. Whilst my pilot will be a ‘light touch’ version of my doctoral study, it is important for me to […]
I just got back from a two day course by Vitae on “How to be an effective researcher for postgraduate researchers”. It was fun. And a few activities really left me intrigued. One such activity was a role play with one person behaving as a supervisor and the […]
Bateson (1972) draws our attention to the relationship between man and his tools. He asks: “Suppose I am a blind man, and I use a stick…Is my mental system bounded at the handle of the stick? Is it bounded by my skin? Does it start halfway up the […]
If we take the view that the tools we use for certain actions do not simply facilitate them, but they ultimately transform them in a mutually constitutive way, then the study of one (actor) necessitates the study of the other (actor). As such, an approach known as Actor […]