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This book is in honour of the late sociologist Ken Plummer - a remarkable scholar whose work transformed several fields, from his early writing on symbolic interactionism, stigma and sexualities, through methodological innovations that have underpinned the 'narrative turn', to his explorations of citizenship and humanism.
The chapters in this collection cover a diverse range of topics and all draw on Ken's work, revealing his enduring and significant influence. The breadth of contributions here testify to Ken Plummer's impact across generations of scholars and sub-fields of sociology and social psychology. Many of the authors in this collection knew Ken personally, as colleagues, students and friends.
Contributing to debates on critical theory, intimacy and sexuality, the interdisciplinary nature of this book enables it to reach a wide audience engaged in research methods of social theory, anthropology, media studies, sociology, psychology and history. It is aimed primarily at students, lecturers and researchers interested in gender, sexuality, identity, social history, social theory, research and teaching methods.
List of contents
Introduction;
SECTION 1. The Sociological Imagination; 1. Ken Plummer on Labelling, Stigma and Symbolic Interactionism; 2. Imagination, Vision, and Passion: On Being a Sociologist; 3. What We Did Next: Queer Stories of Ordinary Lives; 4. Humour as Test of Significance; 5. Telling Stories in Order to Live: Ken Plummer's Sociology of Sexuality; 6. Queering Sociological Imagination and Beyond: My Intellectual Journey with Professor Ken Plummer;
SECTION 2. Intimate Citizenship and the Sociology of Sexualities; 7. Queering Counterpublics and Intimate Citizenship: On the Queer Legacy of Ken Plummer's Scholarship; 8. Authentic Self, Parental Acceptance, and the Quest for Social Recognition: Redefining Intimate Citizenship through PFLAG China; 9. Becoming Intimate Citizens: Education, LGBTQ+ identities, and the Plummer Legacy; 10. Intimate Citizenship and Sex Work and Inequality; 11. Queer lineage: On generational sexualities, LGBTQ identity and visibility;
SECTION 3. Life Narratives: Moments of Discovery, Moments of Connection; 12. Telling Friendship Stories; 13. Embracing the 'aha' moments to forge a rich research life: The creative endeavours of the
Pioneers of Social Research; 14. Critical humanism in the age of the edu-factory: A sociology out of time?; 15. Rights Work and the Social Construction of Rights; 16. Becoming a Sociologist;
SECTION 4. Coda: Song and Dance; 17. Mary's Well of Loneliness in Merrily We Roll Along; 18. 'Some Kind of Paradise': Narrative action and generational sexualities in Max Vernon's musical
The View Upstairs (2017); 19. Encore: Side by Side by Ken'
About the author
Eamonn Carrabine is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Essex. His books include
Crime in Modern Britain (co-authored, 2002);
Power, Discourse and Resistance: A Genealogy of the Strangeways Prison Riot (2004);
Crime, Culture and the Media (2008); and
Crime and Social Theory (2017). He has published widely on media criminology, the sociology of punishment and cultural theory.
Neli Demireva is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. Her research focuses on local communities, migration, inter-ethnic ties, social cohesion, ethnic penalties and multiculturalism. She is the Director of
the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Essex and sits on the International Editorial Board of the journal
Ethnic and Racial Studies and the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex
.Róisín Ryan-Flood is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship (CISC) at the University of Essex, UK. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, citizenship, assisted conception and critical epistemologies. She is the author of
Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Families and Sexual Citizenship (2009) and co-editor of numerous books, including
Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections (2010),
Transnationalising Reproduction (2018),
Difficult Conversations (2023),
Consent: Gender, Power and Subjectivity (2023) and
Queering Desire: Lesbians, Gender and Subjectivity (2024).
Nigel South is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Essex - where he was taught by Ken Plummer in the 1970s. He has published widely on policing, drugs issues, and green criminology and his work is discussed in E. Carrabine and A. Di Ronco (eds)
Criminological Connections, Directions, Horizons (2025). His most recent book (with Avi Brisman) is
Monstrous Nature: Representations of Environmental Harms (2025).
