To me sociology is a way of approaching the world; it’s not only a perspective but also a passion. It’s a way of understanding who we are, how we are and how to understand other elements such as people, organisation and technology. It’s a way of understanding that moves through different scales, from the individual (as it is constructed in its singularity through the idea of the self) to the multiple global scales of capitalism operating throughout the world. I love the way sociology enables us to move through scales with specific forms of understanding. For instance, sociology shows us how the self is produced as an idea over time, repeated until it appears as common sense – so that we do not notice that it is a very specific idea, based on promoting and consolidating the interests of a particular group against its constitutive opposite – the mass. We grow up hearing, seeing and learning to believe in such ideas and use them to make sense of our lives and then suddenly we encounter sociology which enables us to see how the self is a fabrication, a way of insulating ourselves from others, a way of owning property in ourselves, of becoming a ‘proper person’ and a way of blocking off other ways of seeing. When C Wright Mills talks of the sociological imagination he is talking about perspectives – what we can and cannot see and how.

I love the way that sociology never ceases to surprise me, of how it enables me to switch into new ways of seeing. I excitedly anticipate being exposed to the assumptions I take for granted that will be blown apart in the future. This is why I love finding new books, new articles and hearing people talk about new areas. I remember when I first came across Marx as an O-level student (aged 16 years old in a College of Further Education) and it literally changed my life. It made me understand the world differently. As did Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding of ‘cultural capital’. The same happened when I came across different forms of feminism – they enable me to see the world differently. I was offered new forms of interpretation, understanding and new ways of doing and being.