Passionate Sociology

PASSIONATE SOCIOLOGY PASSIONATE SOCIOLOGY Ann Game and Andrew Metcalfe SAGE Publications London · Thousand Oaks · New Delhi © Ann Game and Andrew Metcalfe 1996 Extract from Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. Copyright 1939 by Ludwig Bemelmans, renewed © 1967 by Madeleine Bemelmans and Barbara Bemelmans Marciano. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. First published 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market Greater Kailash - 1 New Delhi 110 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 8039 7460-4 ISBN 0 8039 7461 2 (pbk) Library of Congress catalog record available Contents Acknowledgemen ts vii Passion 1 School 6 Managing 26 Magic 43 Stories 62 Writing 87 Ink 106 Reading 125 Desire 146 Knowing 164 References 175 Index 180 Acknowledgements Dedicated to the joy, and pain, of university teaching, this book sets out what we have learned from teaching sociology together for five years. It's a celebration of the rich rewards of collegiality, of the books and writers we love, of a passionate sociology's capacity to quicken our appreciation and pleasure in the art of life, of the students who have been our teachers. One of the joys of university life is its potential for excessive generosity. Academic life can be a feast to which everyone contributes, whether or not they mean to, whether or not their gifts are used as they intended. Such a feast produces a magical economy where strict reciprocity is impossible and scarcity loses its threat, where teachers and students always get more back than they've given and sometimes more than they've bargained for. We can therefore name only a few of those who've contributed to this book. Sal Renshaw commented on both our first and second drafts and we've benefited immeasurably from her detailed suggestions and her generous encouragement. Gay Hawkins, Annette Kuhn, Ian Lennie, Maddie Oliver and Anita Sibrits also made valuable suggestions on our drafts. Seminar audiences in Sydney, Adelaide and Lancaster commented on various working papers; we learned much about metaphor from a subject we taught with Jenny Lloyd; Leo and Max Sibrits have made a deep impact on several chapters; John Bern conducted the interview discussed in Ink. The editors of Work, Employment & Society have permitted republication of a few paragraphs from Andrew Metcalfe's artic