Papers by Sarah Burton
This short reflective piece uses the concept of 'home' to explore sociology as an intellectual an... more This short reflective piece uses the concept of 'home' to explore sociology as an intellectual and disciplinary pursuit. Drawing on autobiographical reflections and ethnographic study of sociology writing, I consider some of the trajectories of academics into sociology and what these tell us about the discipline itself. In light of increasing incursions by audit culture and marketisation of academia, Holmwood has drawn attention to a lack of clear internal identity as being 'sociology's misfortune' – that sociology loses out, and is weakened by lacking theories and methodologies specific to the discipline. This essay takes a more optimistic view of sociology's position, and instead argues that it is this very ambiguity which keeps the discipline a lively and vital space for explorations of the social.
This article presents a critical uncovering of the continued dominance of whiteness and maleness ... more This article presents a critical uncovering of the continued dominance of whiteness and maleness in processes and practices of knowledge formation. Tracking the figure of the 'white theory boy' or 'dead white man' across experiential accounts of theory, scholarship on canonicity, and pedagogical strategies, the article demonstrates his enduring authority in theoretical knowledge making and dissemination. Where this article moves somewhere different is its suggestion that a space of sympathy be extended to this hegemonic figure. Though the dominance of the 'white theory boy' undoubtedly perpetuates inequalities throughout social theoretic thought, it is necessary to locate a new method of tackling such ingrained problems. Though extending sympathy to the 'white theory boy' is perhaps initially counter-intuitive, my suggestion is that he does not hold the sort of monolithic power we might first assume. Bringing an intersectional analysis of gender, class, 'race' and ethnicity to bear on this figure, creates a space in which a more critical and fine-grained account of the relationship between power, knowledge, and social status can be uncovered. It is through extending this space of sympathy and mutual cooperation to 'white theory boys' that the practical and conceptual machinations of their power are further revealed. From here a more thorough dismantling of this power becomes possible.
Conference Presentations by Sarah Burton
This short paper presents a reflexive account of my experience of the use of content/trigger warn... more This short paper presents a reflexive account of my experience of the use of content/trigger warnings as part of feminist pedagogy. I reflect on the structural power held by lecturers within the classroom and the ways in which this goes unrecognised, thus disavowing academic privilege and sharpening the unequal power relations between teacher and student. Through this, I discuss how feminist thought can be appropriated to shield the already-powerful academic and to bring a veneer of intellectual authenticity to systematic bullying of students. Working reflexively, I show how what is taught in the feminist classroom (especially in terms of emotion and affect) can be conveniently brushed aside in favour of a reassertion of hegemonic, masculinist norms, demonstrating the paucity of application of feminist thought to actual feminist situations and needs. I end by providing some indications of how this can be tackled in order to work towards genuine gender equality.
This paper focuses on relationship between audit culture and the teaching of social theory in UK ... more This paper focuses on relationship between audit culture and the teaching of social theory in UK universities, to provide critical reflections on the (often implicit) ways in which racism operates in the neoliberal university. It argues that aspects of sociological pedagogy in Higher Education are the result of an insidious new cultural mutation of neoliberal racism. Social theory is often understood as providing an intellectual framework for social scientific research. Based on empirical research this paper demonstrates that race and ethnicity continue to be either ignored, or bracketed out via categorization as ‘other’ or ‘difference’ in the teaching of social theory, and therefore in the intellectual foundations of the social sciences.
Building on the work of Gurminder K. Bhambra (2007) and Sara Ahmed (2000; 2012) the paper argues that, whilst this erasure may not be new, the current forms of pedagogical racism are directly related to the audit culture of the neoliberal university. The paper uses the concept of mess and stickiness to analyse how audit culture polices and regulates individuals within via concepts such as ‘diversity’. It shows how race and ethnicity become hyper-visible markers allowing bodies to be tracked and regulated, through bureaucratic processes where labels and documents become ‘stuck’ to bodies/places. The paper concludes with reflections on how this surveillance enacted through audit culture works to harden boundaries of knowledge and is thus played out in the composition and teaching of social theory.
"This paper explores the representation of difference and diversity in social theory teaching wit... more "This paper explores the representation of difference and diversity in social theory teaching within UK Higher Education institutions and argues for a reconceptualization of processes and practices of knowledge making.
Based on empirical research into the teaching of social theory in UK universities (specifically the composition of reading lists and citational practice), the paper examines the processes and practices of performing ‘diversity’ in mainstream knowledge production/dissemination. The paper demonstrates the ways in which non-white, non-male voices are concomitantly present but ‘bracketed off’ within social theory teaching by being taught solely as representing or theorizing ‘difference’ and argues that this form of inclusion is could be more accurately understood as ‘assimilation’. The paper details the ways in which this is brought about and from this position emphasizes the ability of mainstream social theory to obscure and make invisible the diversities of knowledge present in social thought, thus undergirding the dominance of mainstream critical social theory via its representation of other knowledge positions as ‘alternative’. This ultimately results in narratives of the social which compete with one another rather than being indicative of the nuance and textures of different forms of knowledge making.
The paper concludes by arguing not only for a more refined cross fertilization of forms of knowledge making (experiential, theoretical, sens practique) but builds on work by Boltanski (2011), Ahmed (2012) and Smart (2013) to emphasize the need for a thorough reconceptualization of the grounds on which social scientists predicate their knowledge as ‘valuable’ or ‘authoritative’."
John Holloway's recent work has made extensive use of poetic language as both a rhetorical device... more John Holloway's recent work has made extensive use of poetic language as both a rhetorical device in his argument for resistance to the power of capital but also as a method of presenting sociological theory. This stylistic decision has, however, been frequently challenged and derided with Holloway's poetic inclinations questioned as ‘unsociological’.
This paper analyzes the intersection between the poetic and the theoretical in Holloway's work and examines whether the literary style utilized supports or detracts from the sociological basis of Holloway's thesis. Beginning by examining key motifs and tropes, including ‘the scream’ and ‘the crack’, the paper seeks to analyze the effect of the poetic language on the theoretical argument. The paper then moves forward to consider some of the criticisms of Holloway's literary style and engages with these in order to assess both the validity of Holloway's poetry and of the critiques made.
The paper concludes by reflecting on the usefulness of a literary approach to sociologists. Drawing on the scholarship of Bauman (2000) and examples of literary academic critique including Marx, Veblen and Derrida, the paper considers how engagement with literary styles and methods may benefit sociological analysis and how sociological theory may be considered in terms of a narrative. The paper concludes by sketching an initial approach to cross-disciplinary theory writing that encompasses the need for wider engagement and greater impact in creating and disseminating social theory.
‘Queer? Who felt queer?’ A Socio-literary approach to Nationalism and Sexual Citizenship
This ... more ‘Queer? Who felt queer?’ A Socio-literary approach to Nationalism and Sexual Citizenship
This paper takes a socio-literary approach to an examination of the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship, arguing that a study of early-mid twentieth century literature demonstrates that conflation of whiteness with representations of homosexuality or queer is not new. Concentrating on the satirical novels of Evelyn Waugh the paper seeks to demonstrate a clear link between being able to identify as English and being ‘acceptably’ queer.
The paper begins by contextualising Waugh's writing, especially its social and historical relevance and its particular representation of white Englishness (principally the links to class and heritage), before elucidating the ways in which the characters in Waugh’s novels negotiate the gap between their own (queer) sexual identities and the social expectations generated by traditional essentialist thinking. Crucially, the ability to adhere to nationalistic standards, features and privileges of Englishness is used in Waugh's satires to extricate his characters from the perceived disgrace of their various queer behaviours.
The paper moves on to consider how a relationship between national status and sexual identity works, conceptually and in practice and questions whether recourse to appropriation of national identity by LGBTQ characters marks a requisitioning of a dominant cultural model for their own ends, a subverted disguise, or the naïve buying-into of hegemonic order. In light of this the paper ends by reflecting on what a socio-literary understanding of the relationship between national and sexual citizenship can bring to empirically grounded studies of LGBTQ discourses and their apparent link to the white, European secular liberal tradition.
This paper analyzes the response to the 2011 riots from the perspective of dirty theory critique,... more This paper analyzes the response to the 2011 riots from the perspective of dirty theory critique, focusing on the autopsic gaze of those interrogating and analyzing the riots.
The paper begins by situating this gaze as the position of reader and the riots as the text to be read in order to explore the tension between contemporary cultural expectations of stoicism and austerity and the gothic pleasure of transgression of social mores and etiquette. It conceptualises the riots as an instance of postmodern gothic excess which challenges and destabilises the status quo.
Via a close reading of a range of responses to the riots the paper moves forward to explore the autopsic gaze of the respondents. From the standpoint of dirty theory, which privileges disruptive pleasure as a method for understanding the cultural consumption of texts, the paper closely examines how moments of jouissance – the erotic loss of separate identities of reader and text – are brought about in the commentary, focusing on the destabilisation of norms, the discomfort of the reader and the unsettling of cultural and historical assumptions that are brought forward in the analysis.
The paper ends by considering the nature of jouissance as defying meaning or discipline and questions where the commentary on the riots upholds their position as disrupting the status quo, or functions to assimilate and bury the disorder by means of its erotic expulsion from the both the text of the riots and the respondents’ analysis.
This paper explores the significance of discourse of the fantastic in John Holloway's work on ant... more This paper explores the significance of discourse of the fantastic in John Holloway's work on anti-power. Though the presence of the fantastic in Holloway's work has been previously noted, it lacks systematic exploration. The paper argues that in narrating resistance via the fantastic Holloway's rhetoric opens new possibilities for theorizing the individual’s interaction with macro-level power and how the balance of power may be redressed in favour of the ordinary social actor. The paper specifically demonstrates how this is accomplished via employment of ideas of misrule.
The paper begins by setting out the parameters of the fantastic in order to show the inherent potential for misrule and disorder in the genre. It then moves on to survey the ways in which Holloway's argument for resisting the power of capital makes recourse to language of the fantastic, specifically examining Holloway’s rhetoric of cracks, breaks, transgression and urgency in relation to carnivalesque misrule and access to multiplicities of worlds in the fantastic. The paper makes the argument that the access provided by the fantastic to worlds in which the status quo is inverted or subverted shows a destabilisation of hegemonic norms where through participation in misrule actors are able to become agentive subjects.
In conclusion, the paper reflects on how far an identification of the presence of the fantastic assists in an analysis of power and resistance in contemporary society, tentatively suggesting that an understanding of the multiplicities of worlds in the fantastic can aid understanding of the current polyphony of disparate voices and viewpoints and tying this to Holloway's conceptualization of resistance and refusal.
About the Thesis by Sarah Burton
The thesis explores how knowledge in sociology becomes understood as valuable or legitimate, and ... more The thesis explores how knowledge in sociology becomes understood as valuable or legitimate, and does this through a focus on writing processes and practices. The central research question of the thesis asks whether there is there a relationship between the craft of writing, and becoming legitimate or gaining a "sense" of legitimacy as a producer of sociological knowledge. Within this the research explores the personal, professional and institutional(ized) processes of crafting academic sociology writing, how these different processes may be complementary or in friction with one another and whether they are connected to a writer"s sense of their own legitimacy as a scholar of sociology.
Año 1 (2015), n°2 by Sarah Burton
Algunos de los autores enviaron sus aportes en inglés. La responsabilidad por la traducción de di... more Algunos de los autores enviaron sus aportes en inglés. La responsabilidad por la traducción de dichos textos al español es de los editores. Agradecemos a nuestro colega Nicolás Angelcos por traducir la contribución de Bernarnd Lahire del francés al español.
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Papers by Sarah Burton
Conference Presentations by Sarah Burton
Building on the work of Gurminder K. Bhambra (2007) and Sara Ahmed (2000; 2012) the paper argues that, whilst this erasure may not be new, the current forms of pedagogical racism are directly related to the audit culture of the neoliberal university. The paper uses the concept of mess and stickiness to analyse how audit culture polices and regulates individuals within via concepts such as ‘diversity’. It shows how race and ethnicity become hyper-visible markers allowing bodies to be tracked and regulated, through bureaucratic processes where labels and documents become ‘stuck’ to bodies/places. The paper concludes with reflections on how this surveillance enacted through audit culture works to harden boundaries of knowledge and is thus played out in the composition and teaching of social theory.
Based on empirical research into the teaching of social theory in UK universities (specifically the composition of reading lists and citational practice), the paper examines the processes and practices of performing ‘diversity’ in mainstream knowledge production/dissemination. The paper demonstrates the ways in which non-white, non-male voices are concomitantly present but ‘bracketed off’ within social theory teaching by being taught solely as representing or theorizing ‘difference’ and argues that this form of inclusion is could be more accurately understood as ‘assimilation’. The paper details the ways in which this is brought about and from this position emphasizes the ability of mainstream social theory to obscure and make invisible the diversities of knowledge present in social thought, thus undergirding the dominance of mainstream critical social theory via its representation of other knowledge positions as ‘alternative’. This ultimately results in narratives of the social which compete with one another rather than being indicative of the nuance and textures of different forms of knowledge making.
The paper concludes by arguing not only for a more refined cross fertilization of forms of knowledge making (experiential, theoretical, sens practique) but builds on work by Boltanski (2011), Ahmed (2012) and Smart (2013) to emphasize the need for a thorough reconceptualization of the grounds on which social scientists predicate their knowledge as ‘valuable’ or ‘authoritative’."
This paper analyzes the intersection between the poetic and the theoretical in Holloway's work and examines whether the literary style utilized supports or detracts from the sociological basis of Holloway's thesis. Beginning by examining key motifs and tropes, including ‘the scream’ and ‘the crack’, the paper seeks to analyze the effect of the poetic language on the theoretical argument. The paper then moves forward to consider some of the criticisms of Holloway's literary style and engages with these in order to assess both the validity of Holloway's poetry and of the critiques made.
The paper concludes by reflecting on the usefulness of a literary approach to sociologists. Drawing on the scholarship of Bauman (2000) and examples of literary academic critique including Marx, Veblen and Derrida, the paper considers how engagement with literary styles and methods may benefit sociological analysis and how sociological theory may be considered in terms of a narrative. The paper concludes by sketching an initial approach to cross-disciplinary theory writing that encompasses the need for wider engagement and greater impact in creating and disseminating social theory.
This paper takes a socio-literary approach to an examination of the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship, arguing that a study of early-mid twentieth century literature demonstrates that conflation of whiteness with representations of homosexuality or queer is not new. Concentrating on the satirical novels of Evelyn Waugh the paper seeks to demonstrate a clear link between being able to identify as English and being ‘acceptably’ queer.
The paper begins by contextualising Waugh's writing, especially its social and historical relevance and its particular representation of white Englishness (principally the links to class and heritage), before elucidating the ways in which the characters in Waugh’s novels negotiate the gap between their own (queer) sexual identities and the social expectations generated by traditional essentialist thinking. Crucially, the ability to adhere to nationalistic standards, features and privileges of Englishness is used in Waugh's satires to extricate his characters from the perceived disgrace of their various queer behaviours.
The paper moves on to consider how a relationship between national status and sexual identity works, conceptually and in practice and questions whether recourse to appropriation of national identity by LGBTQ characters marks a requisitioning of a dominant cultural model for their own ends, a subverted disguise, or the naïve buying-into of hegemonic order. In light of this the paper ends by reflecting on what a socio-literary understanding of the relationship between national and sexual citizenship can bring to empirically grounded studies of LGBTQ discourses and their apparent link to the white, European secular liberal tradition.
The paper begins by situating this gaze as the position of reader and the riots as the text to be read in order to explore the tension between contemporary cultural expectations of stoicism and austerity and the gothic pleasure of transgression of social mores and etiquette. It conceptualises the riots as an instance of postmodern gothic excess which challenges and destabilises the status quo.
Via a close reading of a range of responses to the riots the paper moves forward to explore the autopsic gaze of the respondents. From the standpoint of dirty theory, which privileges disruptive pleasure as a method for understanding the cultural consumption of texts, the paper closely examines how moments of jouissance – the erotic loss of separate identities of reader and text – are brought about in the commentary, focusing on the destabilisation of norms, the discomfort of the reader and the unsettling of cultural and historical assumptions that are brought forward in the analysis.
The paper ends by considering the nature of jouissance as defying meaning or discipline and questions where the commentary on the riots upholds their position as disrupting the status quo, or functions to assimilate and bury the disorder by means of its erotic expulsion from the both the text of the riots and the respondents’ analysis.
The paper begins by setting out the parameters of the fantastic in order to show the inherent potential for misrule and disorder in the genre. It then moves on to survey the ways in which Holloway's argument for resisting the power of capital makes recourse to language of the fantastic, specifically examining Holloway’s rhetoric of cracks, breaks, transgression and urgency in relation to carnivalesque misrule and access to multiplicities of worlds in the fantastic. The paper makes the argument that the access provided by the fantastic to worlds in which the status quo is inverted or subverted shows a destabilisation of hegemonic norms where through participation in misrule actors are able to become agentive subjects.
In conclusion, the paper reflects on how far an identification of the presence of the fantastic assists in an analysis of power and resistance in contemporary society, tentatively suggesting that an understanding of the multiplicities of worlds in the fantastic can aid understanding of the current polyphony of disparate voices and viewpoints and tying this to Holloway's conceptualization of resistance and refusal.
About the Thesis by Sarah Burton
Año 1 (2015), n°2 by Sarah Burton
Building on the work of Gurminder K. Bhambra (2007) and Sara Ahmed (2000; 2012) the paper argues that, whilst this erasure may not be new, the current forms of pedagogical racism are directly related to the audit culture of the neoliberal university. The paper uses the concept of mess and stickiness to analyse how audit culture polices and regulates individuals within via concepts such as ‘diversity’. It shows how race and ethnicity become hyper-visible markers allowing bodies to be tracked and regulated, through bureaucratic processes where labels and documents become ‘stuck’ to bodies/places. The paper concludes with reflections on how this surveillance enacted through audit culture works to harden boundaries of knowledge and is thus played out in the composition and teaching of social theory.
Based on empirical research into the teaching of social theory in UK universities (specifically the composition of reading lists and citational practice), the paper examines the processes and practices of performing ‘diversity’ in mainstream knowledge production/dissemination. The paper demonstrates the ways in which non-white, non-male voices are concomitantly present but ‘bracketed off’ within social theory teaching by being taught solely as representing or theorizing ‘difference’ and argues that this form of inclusion is could be more accurately understood as ‘assimilation’. The paper details the ways in which this is brought about and from this position emphasizes the ability of mainstream social theory to obscure and make invisible the diversities of knowledge present in social thought, thus undergirding the dominance of mainstream critical social theory via its representation of other knowledge positions as ‘alternative’. This ultimately results in narratives of the social which compete with one another rather than being indicative of the nuance and textures of different forms of knowledge making.
The paper concludes by arguing not only for a more refined cross fertilization of forms of knowledge making (experiential, theoretical, sens practique) but builds on work by Boltanski (2011), Ahmed (2012) and Smart (2013) to emphasize the need for a thorough reconceptualization of the grounds on which social scientists predicate their knowledge as ‘valuable’ or ‘authoritative’."
This paper analyzes the intersection between the poetic and the theoretical in Holloway's work and examines whether the literary style utilized supports or detracts from the sociological basis of Holloway's thesis. Beginning by examining key motifs and tropes, including ‘the scream’ and ‘the crack’, the paper seeks to analyze the effect of the poetic language on the theoretical argument. The paper then moves forward to consider some of the criticisms of Holloway's literary style and engages with these in order to assess both the validity of Holloway's poetry and of the critiques made.
The paper concludes by reflecting on the usefulness of a literary approach to sociologists. Drawing on the scholarship of Bauman (2000) and examples of literary academic critique including Marx, Veblen and Derrida, the paper considers how engagement with literary styles and methods may benefit sociological analysis and how sociological theory may be considered in terms of a narrative. The paper concludes by sketching an initial approach to cross-disciplinary theory writing that encompasses the need for wider engagement and greater impact in creating and disseminating social theory.
This paper takes a socio-literary approach to an examination of the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship, arguing that a study of early-mid twentieth century literature demonstrates that conflation of whiteness with representations of homosexuality or queer is not new. Concentrating on the satirical novels of Evelyn Waugh the paper seeks to demonstrate a clear link between being able to identify as English and being ‘acceptably’ queer.
The paper begins by contextualising Waugh's writing, especially its social and historical relevance and its particular representation of white Englishness (principally the links to class and heritage), before elucidating the ways in which the characters in Waugh’s novels negotiate the gap between their own (queer) sexual identities and the social expectations generated by traditional essentialist thinking. Crucially, the ability to adhere to nationalistic standards, features and privileges of Englishness is used in Waugh's satires to extricate his characters from the perceived disgrace of their various queer behaviours.
The paper moves on to consider how a relationship between national status and sexual identity works, conceptually and in practice and questions whether recourse to appropriation of national identity by LGBTQ characters marks a requisitioning of a dominant cultural model for their own ends, a subverted disguise, or the naïve buying-into of hegemonic order. In light of this the paper ends by reflecting on what a socio-literary understanding of the relationship between national and sexual citizenship can bring to empirically grounded studies of LGBTQ discourses and their apparent link to the white, European secular liberal tradition.
The paper begins by situating this gaze as the position of reader and the riots as the text to be read in order to explore the tension between contemporary cultural expectations of stoicism and austerity and the gothic pleasure of transgression of social mores and etiquette. It conceptualises the riots as an instance of postmodern gothic excess which challenges and destabilises the status quo.
Via a close reading of a range of responses to the riots the paper moves forward to explore the autopsic gaze of the respondents. From the standpoint of dirty theory, which privileges disruptive pleasure as a method for understanding the cultural consumption of texts, the paper closely examines how moments of jouissance – the erotic loss of separate identities of reader and text – are brought about in the commentary, focusing on the destabilisation of norms, the discomfort of the reader and the unsettling of cultural and historical assumptions that are brought forward in the analysis.
The paper ends by considering the nature of jouissance as defying meaning or discipline and questions where the commentary on the riots upholds their position as disrupting the status quo, or functions to assimilate and bury the disorder by means of its erotic expulsion from the both the text of the riots and the respondents’ analysis.
The paper begins by setting out the parameters of the fantastic in order to show the inherent potential for misrule and disorder in the genre. It then moves on to survey the ways in which Holloway's argument for resisting the power of capital makes recourse to language of the fantastic, specifically examining Holloway’s rhetoric of cracks, breaks, transgression and urgency in relation to carnivalesque misrule and access to multiplicities of worlds in the fantastic. The paper makes the argument that the access provided by the fantastic to worlds in which the status quo is inverted or subverted shows a destabilisation of hegemonic norms where through participation in misrule actors are able to become agentive subjects.
In conclusion, the paper reflects on how far an identification of the presence of the fantastic assists in an analysis of power and resistance in contemporary society, tentatively suggesting that an understanding of the multiplicities of worlds in the fantastic can aid understanding of the current polyphony of disparate voices and viewpoints and tying this to Holloway's conceptualization of resistance and refusal.