Comments on: Sociology in Cafe Society

By: Xboy

Xboy — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 07:54:33 +0000

Fame is a virus that you can catch from famous people, though most of us are immune. All famous people know each other. I avoid fame like the plague. I’ve had the misfortune to meet a few famous people, but I’m happy to say I never got to know them.

By: wood turtle

wood turtle — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:54:06 +0000

It’s a big world. It’s the people that are very small.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:08:33 +0000

I’d be more impressed if you hadn’t just implicitly admitted to being friends with a sociologist… Steve

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 01:36:28 +0000

I recently started a new job and one of my colleagues—an early modern historian from the US who just moved to Oxford to take up the position & who had never been to Oxford or Glasgow before—and I were talking about language learning and he mentioned a French-Canadian couple he knew [in the context of a discussion of 2nd-language speakers of English]. It swiftly transpired that I had had dinner with the self-same couple 4 years previously when I had made a quick, and unplanned, trip back to Glasgow for the weekend, arranged a meal at short notice with a friend and she brought along a couple of visiting academics from her department. The fact that two people who’ve lived their lives many thousands of miles apart should discover on meeting that they have acquaintances in common is pretty remarkable—probably surprisingly common-place too…

By: harry

harry — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 22:53:13 +0000

I know the current, and most recent, holders of the Chair that Mannheim used to hold, and which is now named after him. I attend Thanksgiving at EOW’s house every year, and he was the first non-family member to see my second daughter after she was born. I knew Max Geldman in the year or so before his death (Max was a secretary of Trotsky’s, supplied by the SWP (US)). Does that wrap things up. But I never met Lobby Ludd, so I can’t claim the 5 pound prize.

By: mikes

mikes — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 21:07:50 +0000

He’s got an ology? He’s a scientist! Cheap, I know, but there’s a bit of grist in there for you guys.

By: jim

jim — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 20:13:03 +0000

The Wisconsin connection sustains us: I know the “little renegades” and Erik. A family friend’s grandfather taught Lenin Marxism in Switzerland…

By: David Sucher

David Sucher — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 19:42:46 +0000

My father and I (age 3?) were passing the Pierre Hotel in NYC. President Truman and his entourage were just leaving the hotel. The President stopped to politic a bit; my father held me up and President Truman patted me on the head. I have always assumed that my interest in politics stems from that incident.

By: luci phyrr

luci phyrr — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 19:09:15 +0000

I come from a lower middle class family in small town Texas, so I never expected any brushes with celebrity-types. When my mom was ~10 years old (she’s 76 now) she took trips to Mexico with her parents. Apparently, her father knew William Spratling, a silver-smith fairly renowned for his jewelry and such, in Taxco, Mexico. (His pieces are touring museums in the US, and my mom still has a few Spratling originals). My mom was young then, and doesn’t really remember much of it, and frankly couldn’t care less. She never mentioned it to me in my 34 years. Her sister (my aunt) who’s more interested in genealogy and family history, told me recently about some old letters she had discovered, which describe the family meeting Spratling and his friend Diego Rivera. So, apparently, there’s just a couple degrees of seperation between me, Diego Rivera,Frida Kahlo, Leon Trotsky, and, of course, Stalin.

By: Sally

Sally — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 19:04:04 +0000

I’m pretty sure that my father once mentioned that the obstetrician who delivered him was Karl Kautsky’s son. Maybe we could play “six degrees of Karl Kautsky.”

By: David

David — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 17:49:30 +0000

I have a rather conservative (and very verbose) friend who went to visit his liberal ex-girlfriend in Wisconsin while she was staying with her aunt and uncle there during Thanksgiving. His ex wanted him to engage in a political debate with her uncle. My friend came back and was desribing it to me, that her uncle was some Marxist professor and his last name was Wright or something like that. ‘Erik Olin Wright?’ I asked. ‘That sound right’ he said. Not quite Mannheim, but still funny that my friend’s ex tried to unknowingly induce him into a political debate with one of the best known living American Marxists.

By: pedro

pedro — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 16:57:50 +0000

I’m not a social sciences person, but my father is. I had the pleasure of dining at home with one Alain Joxe, and on another occasion with one Alain Touraine. One of them was absolutely delightful company. Two meager (very good friend in between) degrees of separation lie between Claude Levi-Strauss & Maurice Godelier, and my third world family. Pretty cool.

By: rea

rea — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 16:38:06 +0000

No more than 6 degrees of seperation between any two people on the planet? You know me, and my mother knew Enrico Fermi!

By: sarah

sarah — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 15:30:59 +0000

A friend of my mother’s, very old indeed now, used to play piano while Wittgenstein whistled along. That was strange to discover.

By: sarah

sarah — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 15:30:22 +0000

A friend of my mothers, very old indeed now, used to play piano while Wittgenstein whistled along. That was strange to discover.