Stories, Imaginations and Sociology

Eamonn Carrabine is 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 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 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, drug issues, and green criminology, and his work is discussed in Criminological Connections, Directions, Horizons (2025), edited by E. Carrabine and A. Di Ronco. His most recent book (with Avi Brisman) is Monstrous Nature: Representations of Environmental Harms (2025).

• 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’