The Archive but it's a videogame from 1998.
Giovanni Zampieri
@giozzam.bsky.social
Somewhere between sociology and history, researching the infrastructures of confession in 18th-century Italy. www.giovannizampieri.com
Rare professional post: I am honored beyond words to say that @mayrl.bsky.social and me have received the @asanews.bsky.social Comparative and Historical Section Barrington Moore Award for best book in Comparative Historical Sociology for *After Positivism* (tinyurl.com/442uh3b9). 1/
After Positivism | Columbia University Press
What is the value of comparison for research in historical sociology? Today, social scientists regularly express doubt about the positivist premises that hav... | CUP
tinyurl.com
Someone submitted a paper and said in the acknowledgments: "AI made it possible to explore an unfamiliar academic discipline with a level of linguistic precision and scholarly orientation that would previously have required years of immersion." Fun for the writer, not so good for science.
Really happy to see my new article on far-right politics, touristification and the ‘political economy of taste’ published in @bjsociology.bsky.social (open access) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
How Cultural Taste Shapes Recognition and Redistribution Struggles: Far‐Right Politics, Touristification and the Political Economy of Taste
This article connects cultural taste to capitalist mechanisms of redistribution through the concept of political economy of taste. Building on Bourdieusian scholarship on recognition struggles and dr...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
On the shift from “Christian Nationalism” to “Christian Civilization” NYT 👉 www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/b...
There are only two states of a manuscript: "not ready to submit" and "why did I submit this?"
I know you've always wondered: how were confessionals managed in modern Italy? My latest article, just published in Church History, reconstructs the use, maintenance, and negotiation of confessionals in late eighteenth-century Verona. (SPOILER: Their administration was surprisingly bureaucratic!)
The great Carlo Ginzburg has died. I cannot begin to summarise how much his micro historical method has shaped my way of relating to the past. The journal Sociologica had an entire symposium on his scholarship, to which I contributed an article.
For years I've tracked billionaire excess. Each year I show students a chart that blows their minds. This year I had to redraw it for a trillionaire: Elon Musk, $1.32T. Depressing that we're here. Silver lining: couldn't have happened to a less deserving person, proof that wealth ≠ merit.
Elon Musk's $1.32 Trillion, to Scale
The first trillionaire's fortune, one pixel per $1,000 — scroll past every dollar, and see what a fraction of it could do instead.
stanford.edu
RIP Prof. Ginzburg I've been loving this recent, fantastic symposium on his work: sociologica.unibo.it/article/view... Re-reading the thought-provoking interview with him again today, published in this symposium
Introduction: The Indiciary Paradigm in Sociology | Sociologica
sociologica.unibo.it
Greg Britton@gmbritton.bsky.social · 2mo agoWe just published the 50th anniversary edition of THE CHEESE AND THE WORMS by Carlos Ginzburg in April. What an honor it has been to be his American publisher--this book changed everything. www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/... @hopkinspress.bsky.social
Carlo Ginzburg est mort, annonce la presse italienne. Immense historien, il a su construire une oeuvre originale entre micro-histoire et anthropologie historique qui a considérablement renouvelé la discipline. www.repubblica.it/cultura/2026...
Carlo Ginzburg è morto, addio al grande storico italiano
Aveva 87 anni. Era famoso in tutto il mondo per le sue ricerche sulla stregoneria e le credenze popolari
repubblica.it
I know you've always wondered: how were confessionals managed in modern Italy? My latest article, just published in Church History, reconstructs the use, maintenance, and negotiation of confessionals in late eighteenth-century Verona. (SPOILER: Their administration was surprisingly bureaucratic!)
Rebranding a hallucination as a ‘critical confabulation’ that can fill archival gaps is a big no from me.
“Was ist Aura?” (What is Aura?), Walter Benjamin’s notes for The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction on San Pellegrino stationary, San Remo, c. 1935. (Walter Benjamin Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin)
![Handwritten notes, in German, on a page so S. Pellegrino stationary. Text reads: "Was ist Aura? Die Erfahrung der Aura beruht auf der Übertragung einer in der menschlichen Gesellschaft geläufigen Reaktionsform auf das Verhältnis der Natur zum Menschen. Der Angesehene oder angesehen sich gGlaubende erwidert mit einem Blick [schlägt den Blick auf]. Die Aura einer Erscheinung oder eines Wesens erfahren, heißt, ihres Vermögens inne werden, einen Blick zu erwidern [aufzuschlagen]. Dieses Vermögen ist voller Poesie. Wo ein Mensch, ein Tier oder ein Unbeseeltes unter unserm Blick seinen eignen aufschlägt, zieht es uns zunächst in die Ferne; sein Blick träumt, zieht uns seinem Traume nach. Aura ist Erscheinung einer Ferne so nah sie sein mag. Worte selbst haben ihre Aura; Kraus hat sie besonders genau beschrieben: »Je näher man ein Wort ansieht, desto ferner blickt es zurück.« [**]
Soviel Aura in der Welt als noch Traum in ihr. Aber das erwachte Auge verliert nicht die Kraft des Blickes, wenn der Traum gänzlich in ihm erloschen ist. Im Gegenteil.; dann erst wird sein Blick wirklich eindringlich. Er hört auf, dem Blick der Geliebten ähnlich zu sehen, die unterm Blick des Geliebten ihr Auge […]"
Source: https://cenex.net/logos-was-ist-aura/](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xkjqfvtcfakukddedpzrefm2/bafkreihvvkyq4cyrdnen26gmenh5c2v3g6ecz32ykh5i2hdxumwteoe2vi)
✨ We are hiring @crestumr.bsky.social ✨ Post-doc position, up to 3 years, in a Horizon project. Profile: at the intersection of NLP & Social Sciences. More information here: shorturl.at/TxDLN 🥰 RT appreciated 🥰
Post-doctoral Position: Computational Analysis of Judicial Decisions (CREST/CNRS-Ecole polytechnique) – CSS @ IP-Paris
Site web de l'axe sciences sociales computationnelles du CREST-CNRS. Cours et tutoriels pour l'analyse des données numériques en sciences sociales.
shorturl.at
The final solution for AI in academia is a scenario where students are submitting AI-generated homework to be graded by AI-generated faculty using AI agents, all of which is being overseen by highly paid administrators who are extracting money from the students in exchange for a degree. The end.
LOLOL "What stood out most was ꜱᴛʀᴜᴄᴛᴜʀᴀʟ ʙᴀᴄᴋ-ᴇɴᴅ ꜱʜɪᴘᴘɪɴɢ ᴛʀᴀᴄᴋɪɴɢ, which feels like the kind of nuance that naturally sparks layered and honest conversation in our group."
Really interesting that they’re using a Tower of Babel analogy (structure built by humans to concentrate Earthly power) rather than the antichrist, AI backers’ preferred analogy, one that suggests AI is an entity rather than a thing. Almost like the Catholic church has read the Bible.
Academia relies on good faith. It cannot be done otherwise. This is precisely why plagiarists, people who fake data, people who deliberately ignore counter-evidence, and fascists need to be driven out. Full cordon sanitaire against this crap.
will pooley@willpooley.bsky.social · 3mo agoabsolutely wild to see people out here saying that it is responsibility of peer reviewers to check for hallucinated references. it is hard enough to persuade people to read articles and provide reviews. expecting them to spend hours cross reffing literature is unreal.
I was thinking the other day that it feels like a revamp of the enclosure movement, but this time the commons they're attempting to enclose is critical thought and personal competence.
PLEASE SHARE: Serious request for a future scientific collaboration. Do I know any historians/sociologists who works with, or love working with historic ego documents. Diaries, letters, notes, etc. Especially those that describe real, or wished for, romantic partners/interests? email me, DM me!
This one has been on the makings for years now, glad to finally see it out there!
Benjamin H. Bradlow@bhbradlow.bsky.social · 4mo agoHuge, blockbuster new paper in the sociology of climate change by @liviosilva.bsky.social, just accepted to @amjsoc.bsky.social! Reach and Retrenchment of the Environmental State: Global Climate Politics in the Amazon Rainforest doi.org/10.1086/741696 i
all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant
This is a really important piece, which I would commend to anyone interested in the future of creativity under finance capitalism. The pressures on the art world are in some ways distinct from those encroaching on the humanities but there are also plenty of overlaps. doi.org/10.1162/OCTO...
New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art*
Abstract. Part of October's “Art Communities at Risk” series, Josh Kline's essay examines key structural problems in the American art industry through the lens of class, tracing their origins back to ...
doi.org
Jimmie Wright @theartanchor.bsky.social · 4mo agoHow Josh Kline Wrote the Essay That the Art World Can’t Stop Talking About - Art News
if Wikipedia, an org with a shoestring budget and volunteer workforce can ban use of llms, what excuse do large orgs and universities have
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 4mo agoNew: Wikipedia has officially banned AI-generated content. After months of heated debate and previous attempts to restrict the use of LLMs, volunteer editors accepted a new policy that prohibits using them to create articles for the online encyclopedia www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...