How do citizens choose who to vote for? A sociological account of the 2015 UK general election

British voters are going to the polls today for the 2015 UK general election. Lambros Fatsis takes a sociological perspective on the voting process by assessing how citizens choose to exercise their vote. He writes that there are both ‘civic-oriented’ and ‘culture-oriented’ explanations for how citizens make their choice and that understanding this process offers a greater understanding of our political identity

Book review: the use and abuse of music: criminal records by Eleanor Peters

In The Use and Abuse of Music: Criminal Records, Eleanor Peters introduces music as a powerful instrument for thinking critically about crime and its contested meanings, while also attuning readers to its use as a conductor of politics and a record of abuses by liberal and oppressive regimes alike. While the book is short in length, it succeeds in condensing valuable insights into music as a unique mode for thinking about law-making, law-breaking, violence and torture, as well as censorship and resistance, writes Lambros Fatsis

Greece must put aside divisive rhetoric if a solution to the country’s crisis is to be found

The Greek debt crisis continues to dominate the agenda ahead of an EU summit to be held later today. Lambros Fatsis writes on the approach pursued by the Syriza-led government since it came to power in January. He argues that Syriza’s hostile approach during negotiations has been counter-productive and that the party’s rhetoric has simply reinforced a false distinction between northern Europe and Greece

The Greek crisis illustrates both the poverty of Syriza’s ideology and the flaws in the EU’s balance-sheet approach to decision-making

Who carries the blame for the Greek debt crisis: the country’s government or its creditors? Lambros Fatsis writes that while there is a tendency to blame one side or the other for the crisis, both sides must take joint-responsibility for the failure to negotiate a solution. He argues that the Syriza-led government’s stubbornly uncooperative stance has undermined the country’s position, while the EU’s decision to place a premium on economic concerns at the expense of political questions has been similarly damaging

Making sociology public: a critical analysis of an old idea and a recent debate

The current thesis attempts to discuss, critique, and repair the idea of public sociology as a public discourse and a professional practice. Emerging in the writings of C W. Mills and Alvin Gouldner in the late 1950s and 1970s, “public sociology” was given its name in 1988 by Herbert J. Gans, before it was popularised by Michael Burawoy in 2004, reflecting a recurring desire to debate the discipline’s public relevance, responsibility and accountability to its publics: academic and extra-academic alike. Resisting a trend in the relevant literature to treat the term as new, it is argued that the notion of making sociology “public” is as old as the discipline itself, suggesting that the recent public sociology debate does not describe a modern predicament, but an enduring characteristic of sociology’s epistemic identity. A detailed critical review of recent controversies on public sociology is offered as a compass with which to navigate the terms and conditions of the term, as it has been espoused, critiqued and re-modelled to fit divergent aspirations about sociology’s identity, status and function in academia and the public sphere. An invitation to understand the discipline beyond a language of crisis concludes the thesis, offering eleven counter-theses to M. Burawoy’s approach that seek to reconstruct sociology’s self-perception, while also suggesting ways of making it public in the context of intellectual life at the 21st century

The epistemological chaos of platform capitalism and the future of the social sciences

Networked digital platforms have destabilised and reconfigured long-established forms of knowledge production and communication, changing the ways in which we consume media and engage with the public sphere and expert knowledge. In this extract from their new book, The Public and Their Platforms, Mark Carrigan and Lambros Fatsis, outline how these platforms have reshaped the creation of public knowledge and why researchers should seek to engage with this transformed knowledge hierarchy in new ways

Laser activated single-use micropumps

AbstractLab on Chip technologies have enabled the possibility of novel μTAS devices (micro Total Analysis System) that could drastically improve health care services for billions of people around the world. However, serious drawbacks that reside in fluid handling technology currently available for these systems often restrict the commercialization of such devices. This work demonstrates a novel fluid handling method as a possible alternative to current micropumping techniques for disposable microfluidic chips. This technology is based on a single use, low cost, thermal micropumping system in which expandable microsphere mixtures are activated by commercial grade laser diodes to achieve flow rates as high as 2.2μl/s and total volumes over 160μl. With the addition of a volume dependent shut off valve, nanoliter repeatability is realized. Pressure and heat transfer related data are presented. Finally, the possible prospects and limitations of this technology as a core element in unified optofluidic systems are discussed