June 2023
This month, I spoke at two academic events. On June 7, I hosted the seminar “Therapeutic Cultures: A View from Latin America” at SAGE Publication's Social Science Space. In this seminar, I explored a new book, Beyond Therapeutic Culture in Latin America (2023), together with Professor Mariano B. Plotkin (Universidad de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina), Dr. Piroska Csúri (Universidad de San Andrés and Universidad Nacional de Lanús, Argentina), Dr. Nicolás Viotti (National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, Argentina), and Dr. Edgar Cabanas (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain).
On June 8, I delivered a paper, “Therapeutic politics re-considered: Therapeutic culture and the politics of intimate life in the Global South”, at the annual conference of the conference of the European Network for Psychological Anthropology at the University of Oslo in Norway.
On June 8, I delivered a paper, “Therapeutic politics re-considered: Therapeutic culture and the politics of intimate life in the Global South”, at the annual conference of the conference of the European Network for Psychological Anthropology at the University of Oslo in Norway.
May 2023
My article 'The high risks of fabrication of future-educated learning human kinds' has been published in Research Papers in Education. The full text is available here. I wrote this together with Kristiina Brunila (University of Helsinki).
From May 2 to 5, I held the seminar “Self-optimisation: Education, governance and self-identity” at the Faculty of Education of the University of Helsinki.
January 2023
My article "Self-optimisation: Conceptual, discursive and historical perspectives" has been published in Current Sociology. I wrote this article with Anja Röcke (Humboldt University of Berlin). It is available here.
My article 'Therapeutic politics reconsidered: power, post-colonialism and the psychologisation of society in the Global South' has been awarded the 'Topic of the Month' for January 2023 by the journal International Sociology and the International Sociological Association. This article was originally published in International Sociology in 2022. It is available here. For background reading on the article and our research, take a look at this page, on the website of the International Sociological Association.
December 2022
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My book Affective Capitalism in Academia: Revealing Public Secrets is due to be published by Bristol University Press early next year. I have co-edited this book together with Kristiina Brunila (University of Helsinki). It brings together contributions from a great group of scholars from around the world, to examine the affectively charged dynamics of academic labour in the today's corporate universities. In so doing, the book develops so far underdeveloped dialogue between affect theory and scholarship on academic capitalism. I am pleased to have received my print copies of the book, after working on it for the past three years. Further information on it is available here.
On December 2, I chaired the online panel discussion “Re-thinking the Therapeutic: Affect, Alienation, and Politics in Therapeutic Culture”, hosted by SAGE Social Science Space. The occasion for this event was the publication of Suvi Salmenniemi's new book Affect, Alienation, and Politics in Therapeutic Culture. This panel discussion brought together Professor Suvi Salmenniemi (University of Turku, Finland), Professor Sam Binkley (Emerson College, Boston, USA), Dr. Edgar Cabanas (Universidad Camilo José Cela, Madrid, Spain), and Dr. Christina Scharff (King’s College, London, United Kingdom), and we discussed a broad range of issues on the politics and practice of contemporary therapeutic culture. A recording of the event is available here. |
November 2022
My article 'Self-optimisation: Conceptual, Discursive and Historical Perspectives' has been accepted for publication in Current Sociology. I wrote this together with Anja Röcke (Humboldt University of Berlin).
This month I also delivered a paper on the sociology of psychologies at the international conference “Contestations of Health and Wellbeing”, at University of Umeå in Sweden.
This month I also delivered a paper on the sociology of psychologies at the international conference “Contestations of Health and Wellbeing”, at University of Umeå in Sweden.
July 2022
On July 5, 2022, I was due to give a paper on self-optimisation at the annual conference of the European Consortium for Sociological Research at the University of Amsterdam, with Dr. Anja Röcke (Humboldt University of Berlin). Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the conference in person, and Dr. Röcke delivered our presentation on our behalf.
June 2022
On June 2, I delivered a talk on my research on therapeutic politics and the psychologisation of society at the globalisation seminar of the Centre Marc Bloch, Humboldt University of Berlin.
March 2022
I have returned to the UK, after an absence of five years, to take up a new appointment, as Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Swansea University in Wales.
February 2022
Article 'Therapeutic politics reconsidered: Power, post-colonialism and the psychologisation of society in the Global South'
My article 'Therapeutic politics reconsidered: Power, post-colonialism and the psychologisation of society in the Global South' has been published in International Sociology. It is available here.
In this article, we critically interrogate the relationship between the post-political turn and the psychologisation of social life. It has long been argued that psychologisation, in the form the popularisation of psychotherapeutic discourses and practices and their usage across a range of non-specialist institutional domains, contributes to de-politicisation and the current crisis of democratic politics. However, the empirical basis for this argument remains narrow, and there is a dearth of attendant research in the Global South. In response, we consider how the psychologisation of society might intersect with its de-politicisation or, possibly, with its re-politicisation, focusing on Trinidad in the Anglophone Caribbean. We do so through a socio-historical analysis of the implication of psychotherapy in colonial and postcolonial programmes of social control, and by exploring contemporary middle-class people’s
uses of popular psychotherapeutic discourses to account for everyday experiences of gender and intimate life.
My article 'Therapeutic politics reconsidered: Power, post-colonialism and the psychologisation of society in the Global South' has been published in International Sociology. It is available here.
In this article, we critically interrogate the relationship between the post-political turn and the psychologisation of social life. It has long been argued that psychologisation, in the form the popularisation of psychotherapeutic discourses and practices and their usage across a range of non-specialist institutional domains, contributes to de-politicisation and the current crisis of democratic politics. However, the empirical basis for this argument remains narrow, and there is a dearth of attendant research in the Global South. In response, we consider how the psychologisation of society might intersect with its de-politicisation or, possibly, with its re-politicisation, focusing on Trinidad in the Anglophone Caribbean. We do so through a socio-historical analysis of the implication of psychotherapy in colonial and postcolonial programmes of social control, and by exploring contemporary middle-class people’s
uses of popular psychotherapeutic discourses to account for everyday experiences of gender and intimate life.
October 2021
Article 'From public to commercial service: State-market hybridization in the UK visa and immigration permit infrastructure, 1997–2021'
My article 'From public to commercial service: State-market hybridization in the UK visa and immigration permit infrastructure, 1997–2021' has been published in the British Journal of Sociology. I have co-authored this publication with Yang Hu (Lancaster University, UK). It is available here.
This article charts the transformation, between 1997 and 2021, of the family visa and immigration permit infrastructure from a public into a commercial service in the United Kingdom. In doing so, it reveals a process of state-market hybridization underpinning the commercialization of migration regulation. Drawing on the analysis of legal archives, policy reports, and marketing materials directed at family migrants spanning 1997–2021, it presents fresh, systematic evidence of how, since 2007, a commercialized state-market hybrid migration infrastructure for visas and immigration permits has developed in the UK. We show how the trend of state-market hybridized commercialization has cascaded through three dimensions of migration infrastructure, as follows: (1) state and public immigration agencies, (2) outsourcing visa application firms, and (3) private immigration advisers. Predicated on this hybrid public–private commercial infrastructure, application procedures for visas and immigration permits have become increasingly reconstituted as commercial, rather than public, services. This transformation has created a new transactional logic that stratifies individuals' right to family life along socioeconomic lines.
My article 'From public to commercial service: State-market hybridization in the UK visa and immigration permit infrastructure, 1997–2021' has been published in the British Journal of Sociology. I have co-authored this publication with Yang Hu (Lancaster University, UK). It is available here.
This article charts the transformation, between 1997 and 2021, of the family visa and immigration permit infrastructure from a public into a commercial service in the United Kingdom. In doing so, it reveals a process of state-market hybridization underpinning the commercialization of migration regulation. Drawing on the analysis of legal archives, policy reports, and marketing materials directed at family migrants spanning 1997–2021, it presents fresh, systematic evidence of how, since 2007, a commercialized state-market hybrid migration infrastructure for visas and immigration permits has developed in the UK. We show how the trend of state-market hybridized commercialization has cascaded through three dimensions of migration infrastructure, as follows: (1) state and public immigration agencies, (2) outsourcing visa application firms, and (3) private immigration advisers. Predicated on this hybrid public–private commercial infrastructure, application procedures for visas and immigration permits have become increasingly reconstituted as commercial, rather than public, services. This transformation has created a new transactional logic that stratifies individuals' right to family life along socioeconomic lines.
September 2021
Article 'COVID-19, Nation-States and Fragile Transnationalism' published in Sociology
My article 'COVID-19, Nation-States and Fragile Transnationalism' has been published in Sociology. I have co-authored this publication with Yang Hu (Lancaster University, UK). It is available in open access here.
In this intervention, we discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has reconfigured transnational mobilities, connections, and solidarities, which reveals the fragility of transnationalism predicated on cosmopolitan ethics but rooted in nation-level politics. We show that as the pandemic severely disrupted transnational (infra)structures predicated on state-centric transnationalism from above, the survival and well-being of diverse transnationally mobile groups, such as refugees, transnational families, and international students, have been placed under unprecedented threat. In doing so, we reflect on the configurations of transnationalism in sociological understandings of globalisation, in and beyond the context of COVID-19. We advance an urgent call for action to address the consequences of the pandemic for vulnerable people who lead precarious lives in a transnational limbo caught in the gaps between nation-states.
My article 'COVID-19, Nation-States and Fragile Transnationalism' has been published in Sociology. I have co-authored this publication with Yang Hu (Lancaster University, UK). It is available in open access here.
In this intervention, we discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has reconfigured transnational mobilities, connections, and solidarities, which reveals the fragility of transnationalism predicated on cosmopolitan ethics but rooted in nation-level politics. We show that as the pandemic severely disrupted transnational (infra)structures predicated on state-centric transnationalism from above, the survival and well-being of diverse transnationally mobile groups, such as refugees, transnational families, and international students, have been placed under unprecedented threat. In doing so, we reflect on the configurations of transnationalism in sociological understandings of globalisation, in and beyond the context of COVID-19. We advance an urgent call for action to address the consequences of the pandemic for vulnerable people who lead precarious lives in a transnational limbo caught in the gaps between nation-states.
June 2021
Review article 'The Sociology of Psychologies'
My article 'The Sociology of Psychologies' was published in Contemporary Sociology in late June. In it, I review Benjamin Hunnicutt's The Age of Experiences, Manufacturing Happy Citizens by Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz, and Assembling Therapeutics, edited by Suvi Salmenniemi, Johanna Nurmi, Inna Perheentupa, and Harley Bergroth, to map the state of sociological research on psychologisation and the therapeutic turn. The article can be found on the website of Contemporary Sociology, here.
My article 'The Sociology of Psychologies' was published in Contemporary Sociology in late June. In it, I review Benjamin Hunnicutt's The Age of Experiences, Manufacturing Happy Citizens by Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz, and Assembling Therapeutics, edited by Suvi Salmenniemi, Johanna Nurmi, Inna Perheentupa, and Harley Bergroth, to map the state of sociological research on psychologisation and the therapeutic turn. The article can be found on the website of Contemporary Sociology, here.
April 2021
Conference paper on therapeutic entrepreneurs and the mindfulness industry
On April 22 and 23, Ashley Frawley (University of Swansea) and I delivered a paper on therapeutic entrepreneurs and the mindfulness industry at the international conference 'The Therapeutic North and South'. I had co-organised this conference together with Mariano Plotkin, Nicolás Viotti and Piroska Csuri, at the Institute for Social and Economic Development (IDES) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The full conference programme, including an abstract of my paper, can be found here:
| Conference Programme |
New journal article on 'expat' community formation in Shanghai
My article 'Physical activity, sport and transnational migrant spaces in Shanghai, China: (Re)crafting contours of a metropolitan cityscape', written with Geoff Kohe (University of Kent) and Mengwei Tu (East China University of Science and Technology, was published in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport.
The full text can be found here.
The full text can be found here.