Dr Mark Featherstone

Title: Senior Lecturer in Sociology
Phone: (+44) 01782 734179
Email:
Location: CBC0.014
Role: Staff Student Liaison Coordinator, Open/Visit Day Coordinator, Research Lead for Sociology
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. Death-Drive America: Reading Scott Wilson’s Critique of Bush’s America. Fast Capitalism, vol. 7(2).
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Event Horizon: Utopia-Dystopia in Bauman’s Thought. In Bauman's Challenge: Sociological Issues for the 21st Century. Tester M and Davis M (Eds.). Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Utopian Bodies. In Acting bodies and social networking. Pirani BM and Varga I (Eds.). University Press of America.
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Virilio’s Apocalypticism. CTheory. link>
  • Featherstone MA. 2009. Appetite for Destruction: On Naomi Klein’s Neo-liberal Utopia-Dystopia. Fast Capitalism, vol. 5(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 MA. 2013. Being-in-Hull, Being-on-Bransholme. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, vol. 17(2), 179-196. doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2013. Coito Ergo Sum: Serbian Sadism and Global Capitalism in A Serbian Film. Journal of Horror Studies, vol. 4(1). doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2013. Even the rats don't come here: The Easten European Roma in Contemporary Paris. Cultural Politics, vol. 9(1), 1-21. doi>
  • Featherstone MA and Johnson B. 2012. Ovo Je Srbija: The Horror of the National Thing in A Serbian Film. Journal of Cultural Research, vol. 16(1), 63-79. doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2011. Against the Fake Empire: Utopia, dystopia, apocalypticism in Baudrillard's Late Works. Cultural Politics, vol. 7(3), 465-476.
  • Featherstone M. 2010. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. SOCIOLOGY, vol. 44(2), 373-374. doi>
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Death-Drive America: Reading Scott Wilson’s Critique of Bush’s America. Fast Capitalism, vol. 7(2).
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Virilio’s Apocalypticism. CTheory. link>
  • Featherstone MA. 2009. Appetite for Destruction: On Naomi Klein’s Neo-liberal Utopia-Dystopia. Fast Capitalism, vol. 5(2).
  • Featherstone MA. 2009. The virus of fear and the politics of globalization. Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 22(Fall), 179-194.
  • 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 MA. 2002. Empire and Utopia: A Psychoanalytic Critique of Totality. Cultural Values, vol. 6(4), 369-384. doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2002. Empire. SOCIOL REV, vol. 50(2), 300-303. doi>
  • Featherstone M. 2002. "Empire" by M Hardt and A Negri. Sociological Review, vol. 50(2), 300-303.
  • Featherstone MA. ‘Kinetic Utopia’. New York Journal of Sociology, vol. 3(1).
  • Featherstone MA. Against the Fake Empire: On Baudrillard’s Late Works. Cultural Politics.
  • Featherstone MA. Cracking Cube: Cryptology and Ichnography’. CTheory.
  • 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 MA. 2010. Event Horizon: Utopia-Dystopia in Bauman’s Thought. In Bauman's Challenge: Sociological Issues for the 21st Century. Tester M and Davis M (Eds.). Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Event Horizon: Utopia-Dystopia in Bauman's Thought. In Bauman's Challenge: sociological issues for 21st century. Tester K and Davis M (Eds.). Palgrave.
  • Featherstone MA. 2010. Utopian Bodies. In Acting bodies and social networking. Pirani BM and Varga I (Eds.). University Press of America.
  • Featherstone M. 2002. The obscure politics of conspiracy theory. In The age of anxiety. Parker P (Ed.).
  • 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 10014 Classical Sociology
  • SOC 20047 20th Century Social Theory
  • SOC 30025 Streets, Skyscrapers and Slums - Module Leader
  • SOC 30034 Sex, Death, Desire: Psychoanalysis in Social Context - Module Leader