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Materially Social Blog

Materialism and critical realism

In the first couple of substantive posts on this blog I pinned my colours firmly to a materialist perspective on the social sciences. But what does this ‘materialism’ actually mean?

Does Google give gifts?

Google’s business hybridises a novel form of giving with a novel form of advertising in one of many economic forms that simply do not fit with the old understandings of the economy: forms that we can make more sense of as complexes of interacting economic practices.

Why ‘Materially Social’? Part Two

One of my original aims in studying social ontology was to work out how the social could depend on the material. That would help to give us a non-dualist way of seeing the world, with no mysterious split between the material and the social.

Why ‘Materially Social’? Part One

I’ve called this blog ‘Materially Social’ because the phrase links together the original motivations for my research programme with some recent developments in it. Today I’m going to focus on the original motivations and where they’ve led me – I’ll post about the recent developments later.

Hello Blogosphere

Welcome to the ‘Materially Social’ blog. I’ll be using this to share my academic work in progress – things like ideas under development, comments on papers I’ve read or presentations I’ve heard, thoughts prompted by my teaching and students, and responses to discussions in the literature and the blogosphere. I’ll also do some brief summaries of pieces I’m publishing more formally elsewhere.