Introduction: What’s writing got to do with it? How academics make knowledge and why it matters
1 The origin story of the British sociological canon: here, there, and now
2 ‘The kind of thing you see on Morse’: intellectuals, aesthetics, and academic writing in popular culture
3 Legitimacy, value, and the craft of writing: how do scholars write?
4 Affective relations and the ‘ideal other’: cultural capital, cosmopolitanism, and writing
5 Materiality and mood: finding legitimation in our spaces of writing
6 Becoming and belonging: writing as a process of legitimation
7 Geographies of knowledge: across space and place in sociology
8 How do you solve a problem like the mainstream?
Conclusion: Reflections on sociological knowledge: power, performances, and futures

Appendix A: Participants
Appendix B: Research Excellence Framework
Bibliography
Index

Associated with ‘gleaming spires’ and ‘ivory towers’, academia has often been seen as a space for social and cultural elites where the knowledge produced is disconnected from, if not outright disdainful of, the ‘real world’.

This book explores the forms of power that shape academic knowledge production. Looking specifically at the case of British sociology, and doing so through its modes, styles, and everyday practices of writing, the book examines how certain forms of writing are deployed to assert intellectual legitimacy and claim an elevated rung on the knowledge hierarchy. It offers a rich and personal ethnographic examination of the structural, intellectual, and affective factors which shape the way sociologists write and the knowledge they produce.

Writing power details how academics and intellectuals engage with the politics of writing in order to position themselves within the politics of knowledge. The book argues for a more textured approach to understanding power relations in the field of knowledge production through its demonstrations of how scholars use their writing and writing practices to narrate themselves into legitimacy and position themselves with value in both disciplinary and wider intellectual spaces.