The problem of atomisation: from ‘bowling alone’ to lockdowns
Keynote lecture for the Academy conference, ‘Old roots of the new disorder‘, Bedfordshire, 16 July 2022.
Fear, trust, and the sociology of pandemics
The Covid-19 pandemic was often described as an ‘unprecedented’ disaster, which required wholly new ways of thinking about, and managing, social life. But what was different about this pandemic to those that have afflicted societies over time? Sociologists have long been interested in pandemics, because they disrupt the existing social order and throw existing problems […]
Generation CUB – how the events of Covid, Ukraine and Brexit will shape our teenagers’ lives
Our children have grown up in a febrile state of emergency. How will they deal with a changed state of mind in years to come?
What the pandemic has really done to our children’s minds
If children have chosen ‘anxiety’ as their word of the year, it is because Project Fear has taught them that this is the right way to feel.
The Corona Generation on The Popular Show
I was interviewed by James A. Smith about generations, knowledge, and the impact of Covid restrictions on young people (18/12/21). Listen to it here:
The Dangers of the Generation Myth
Erika Cao has written about The Corona Generation in this piece for New University, the campus newsletter for the University of California, Irvine: Everyone remembers the 2019 “OK Boomer” meme which poked fun at older generations for misunderstanding Millennial and Gen Z culture. While the “OK Boomer” meme is a trivial example of how our […]
‘Ok, Boomer’: la socióloga británica que descubre la trampa de la guerra generacional
El Confidencial has published a long interview with me, by Ana Ramírez: Millennial: si quieres comprar una casa, deja de gastarte el dinero en tostadas de aguacate. Es lo que vino a decir el millonario y promotor australiano Tim Gurner en 2017, preguntado por la crisis que atravesaban los jóvenes en su país natal. “Sus expectativas son muy, muy altas”. Aguacates […]
How Greta serves the elites
In the early months of the pandemic, children were neither seen nor heard. Amid the eerie silence of padlocked playgrounds and empty town centres, those earnest appeals to ‘the voice of youth’ that were prominent in every big political debate of the last decade were quickly forgotten. Gripped by an emergency that threatened adults’ health, all that […]
Young people need a return to normal – Now
This time last year, I felt fortunate to be among a minority of academics able to teach students on campus. The experience was pretty weird. I was standing several metres away from new undergraduates, bellowing through a plastic face visor, encouraging them to ask questions or discuss issues with each other as they sat in […]
Why the rush to vaccinate children?
How has the UK’s Covid vaccination rollout come to this? We started the year with a jabs programme that was the envy of much of the world. We successfully fought off a wave of infections with a rapid, careful and systematic rollout to those most vulnerable to the virus. But the ongoing row over whether to vaccinate […]