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Welcome to

School of Sociology and Criminology

 

Sociology

Dr Mark Featherstone

Title: Senior Lecturer in Sociology
Phone: (+44) 01782 7 34179
Email:
Location: CBC0.014
Role: International Champion
Contacting me: During Office Hours, posted on my door, or by appointment via email.
Featherstone Mark full 2011

I grew up in Hull in the 1970s. I became a sociologist largely because I wanted to understand the social changes I saw taking place around me and in particular the decline of key industries, the emergence of mass unemployment, and community breakdown. These social effects impacted upon my own family and the families of everybody I knew and have deeply influenced the way I understand society and think about sociology.

My research specialisms are social theory, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. I am a sociologist of utopias, dystopias, idealised social systems, and the sociological imagination. I recently published a research monograph on the sociological history of the concepts of utopia and dystopia, entitled Tocqueville’s Virus (Routledge), and am currently working on another study on the relationship between utopia and globalisation called Planet Utopia. This book will also be published on Routledge. Apart from my monograph work, I regularly publish articles in journals such as Journal of Cultural Research, Cultural Politics, Journal of Classical Sociology, Ctheory, and Fast Capitalism. Beyond my own research I am Reviews Editor of the Sociological Review and Cultural Politics. I am also associate member of the Bauman Institute at Leeds University, UK.

 

Selected Publications

  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Virilio’s Apocalypticism. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. 2009. Appetite for Destruction: On Naomi Klein’s Neo-liberal Utopia-Dystopia. Fast Capitalism, vol. 5(2).
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2007. The End of History: Utopian Realism and the Politics of Idiocy. Journal of Classical Sociology, vol. Volume 7(1), 109-126. doi>
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2006. Tocqueville's Virus: Utopia and Dystopia in Western Social and Political Thought. Routledge.
  • Featherstone MA. Death-Drive America: Reading Scott Wilson’s Critique of Bush’s America. Fast Capitalism, vol. 7(2).

Full Publications List show

Books

  • Featherstone MA. 2012. The Utopia of Crime. Paris: D-Fiction.
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2006. Tocqueville's Virus: Utopia and Dystopia in Western Social and Political Thought. Routledge.
  • Featherstone M. 2002. Knowledge and the Production of Non-Knowledge. Hampton Press, New Jersey.

Journal Articles

  • Featherstone M. 2010. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. SOCIOLOGY, vol. 44(2), 373-374. doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Virilio’s Apocalypticism. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. 2009. Appetite for Destruction: On Naomi Klein’s Neo-liberal Utopia-Dystopia. Fast Capitalism, vol. 5(2).
  • Featherstone M. 2008. The hegemony of common sense: Wisdom and mystification in everyday life. CONTEMP SOCIOL, vol. 37(1), 70-71.
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2007. The End of History: Utopian Realism and the Politics of Idiocy. Journal of Classical Sociology, vol. Volume 7(1), 109-126. doi>
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2003. The eye of war: Images of destruction in Virilio and Bataille. Journal of Cultural Research, vol. 7(4), 433-447. doi>
  • Featherstone M and Holohan S. 2003. The politics of race: Objectivity, subjectivity and the ideologies of multiculturalism. Law and Critique, vol. 14(1), 1-27.
  • Featherstone M. 2002. "Empire" by M Hardt and A Negri. Sociological Review, vol. 50(2), 300-303.
  • Featherstone M. 2002. Empire. SOCIOL REV, vol. 50(2), 300-303. doi>
  • FEATHERSTONE MA. 2002. Empire and Utopia: A Psychoanalytic Critique of Totality. Cultural Values, vol. 6(4), 369-384. doi>
  • Featherstone MA. ‘Being-in-Hull’. City.
  • Featherstone MA. ‘Kinetic Utopia’. New York Journal of Sociology, vol. 3(1).
  • Featherstone MA and Johnson B. ‘Ovo Je Srbija: The Horror of the National Thing in A Serbian Film’ (Forthcoming). Journal of Cultural Research.
  • Featherstone MA. Against the Fake Empire: On Baudrillard’s Late Works. Cultural Politics.
  • Featherstone MA. Cracking Cube: Cryptology and Ichnography’. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. Death-Drive America: Reading Scott Wilson’s Critique of Bush’s America. Fast Capitalism, vol. 7(2).
  • Featherstone MA, Holohan S, Poole E. Discourses of the War on Terror: Constructions of Otherness After 7/7. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politis, vol. 6(2).
  • Featherstone MA. Economies of Sacrifice: Recognition, Monadism, and Alien-ation. Cultural Values, vol. 5(3).
  • Featherstone MA. Political Surrealism and Kinetic Utopia. State of Nature.
  • Featherstone M. 'Ruin Value'. Journal of cultural research, vol. 9(3), 301-321.
  • Featherstone MA. Speed and Violence: Sacrifice in Virilio, Derrida, and Girard. Anthropoetics, vol. 6(2).
  • Featherstone MA. The Redemption of the Real: Walter Benjamin’s Real. Cultural Politics, vol. 1(3).
  • Featherstone MA. The State of the Network: Irrationality in the Global Age. Journal of Cultural Research, vol. 2(2).
  • Featherstone MA. The Totalitarian Psyche and Nazi Psychoanalysis. CTheory.
  • Featherstone MA. Utopia and Fear. Topia.
  • Featherstone MA. Utopia of Crime: The Global Culture of Cruelty. Parole.
  • Featherstone MA. Utopia Today: Anti-Capitalism and Utopianism. Sociological Review, vol. 55(2).

Chapters

  • Featherstone M. 2002. The obscure politics of conspiracy theory. In The age of anxiety. Parker P (Ed.).
  • Featherstone MA. Event Horizon: Utopia-Dystopia in Bauman’s Thought. In Bauman's Challenge. Tester M and Davis M (Eds.).
  • Featherstone MA. Utopian Bodies. In Body as Icon.
  • Featherstone MA. Velocita e Violenza. Il Sacrifio in Virilio, Derrida e Girard’. In Scene e Linguaggi Dell’ Origine: Anthropologia Generativa e Deconstruzione.

I teach across the sociology programme and offer elective modules on race and class, globalisation, and utopias and dystopias. I also teach on the Media, Culture, Communication programme at Keele, where I run the core module on cultural analysis. I am also Programme Leader of the Masters programme in Urban Futures and Sustainable Communities.

Apart from teaching on the Sociology programme, I also contribute to the Media and Cultural Studies degree at Keele. My main contribution to this course is a module called Analysing Culture which considers the history of the idea of culture in social thought. Beyond my teaching at Keele, I am also Visiting Associate Professor at Ferris University, Yokohama, where I offer courses in British Sociology, Social and Political Thought, and Globalisation to both undergraduate and graduate students.

  • SOC 20047 20th Century Social Theory
  • SOC 20043 Globalisation and its Discontents
  • SOC 30010 Dreamworld and Catastrophe
  • SOC 30025 Streets, Skyscrapers and Slums
  • SOC 30034 Sex, Death, Desire: Psychoanalysis in Social Context