William Davies, a sociologist and political economist, and contributing editor at the LRB, teaches at Goldsmiths and has written extensively on subjects such as neoliberalism and the ‘happiness industry’. This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain includes several of his essays for the LRB.
The period of human history when European people could confidently characterise themselves as ‘modern’ lasted barely a hundred years, from the upheavals of the 1870s to those of the 1970s. This was the era in which the bureaucratic nation-state appeared to have been secured as the building block of geopolitical power, and the welfare state became essential to the pursuit of...
‘Perhaps we could start with you telling us what you understand by the term “plagiarism”.’ I don’t know how many times I’ve spoken these words over the last two years. Twenty or thirty perhaps. In my role as chair of the exam board in my department it falls to me to chair plagiarism hearings, and this awkward icebreaker serves as a way of establishing...
The slow reopening of the British hospitality sector over the past few weeks signals a re-emergence from the great closures of the last year and a half – hopefully, this time, a permanent re-emergence, though who knows? No economic sector has been hit harder by Covid-19 than hospitality, a category that officially designates hotels, restaurants and pubs, but which bleeds into other...
There are two types of people: professional social scientists and amateur social scientists. To put that another way, a central problem of social science is that, unlike natural science, your objects of study have their own account of who they are and what they’re doing. The professional demographer may classify someone according to a set of categories widely recognised among experts,...
In July, BBC Music Magazine carried a column suggesting some punchy ideas for reforming the Proms, given the unique circumstances presented by coronavirus. ‘With massed choirs and a packed flag-waving audience ruled out on medical grounds,’ Richard Morrison wrote, ‘there will never be a better moment to drop that toe-curlingly embarrassing anachronistic farrago of...
William Davies joins Tom to assess the efforts of the UK’s new Labour government in tackling the country’s many economic challenges.
The political economist William Davies joins Tom to discuss the UK’s high inflation, what government policies could alleviate the crisis and whether next year’s general election will lead to any significant...
William Davies talks to Thomas Jones about the new political polarisation, and what it owes to the online culture of instant feedback. What does politics look like, Davies asks, once the provocation of...
Katrina Forrester and William Davies discuss political crisis, and in particular the crisis of liberalism, as part of our 40th anniversary event series.
William Davies talks to Tom Crewe about politics in the new media age.
William Davies talks to Tom about his recent LRB Winter Lecture, looking at how reactions – facial expressions, gestures or emojis – have become the main currency of the digital public sphere.
Thanks to the work of behavioural economists there is a lot of experimental evidence to show what many of us would have suspected anyway: that people are not the rational, utility-maximisers...
‘What’s on your mind?’ Each day, the 968 million people who log in to Facebook are asked to share their thoughts with its giant data bank. A dropdown menu of smilies invites...
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