Stories, Imaginations and Sociology Essays in Honour of Ken Plummer

Introduction: Remembering Ken Plummer

Eamonn Carrabine, Neli Demireva, Róisín Ryan-Flood, and Nigel South

PART I The Sociological Imagination

1 Ken Plummer on Labelling, Stigma, and Symbolic Interactionism

Paul Rock

2 Imagination, Vision, and Passion: On Being a Sociologist

John Scott

3 Sexualising Sociology: Ken Plummer and the Making of Critical Sexualities Studies

Jeffrey Weeks

4 Humour as Test of Significance

Harvey Molotch

5 Telling Stories in Order to Live: Ken Plummer’s Sociology of Sexuality

Arlene Stein

6 Queering Sociological Imagination and Beyond: My Intellectual Journey with Professor Ken Plummer

Travis. S. K. Kong

PART II Intimate Citizenship and the Sociology of Sexualities

7 Queering Counterpublics and Intimate Citizenship: On the Queer Legacy of Ken Plummer’s Scholarship

Christian Klesse

8 Remaking Intimate Citizenship: PFLAG China's Practices

Junpeng SHI

9 Becoming Intimate Citizens: Education, LGBTQ+ Identities, and the Plummer Legacy

EJ-Francis Caris-Hamer

10 Intimate Citizenship, Sex Work, and Inequality

Isabel Crowhurst

11 Queer Lineage: On Generational Sexualities, LGBTQ Identity, and Visibility

Róisín Ryan-Flood

PART III Life Narratives: Moments of Discovery, Moments of Connection

12 Telling Friendship Stories

Peter M. Nardi

13 Embracing the ‘Aha’ Moments to Forge a Rich Research Life: The Creative Endeavours of the Pioneers of Social Research

Neli Demireva and Paul Thompson

14 Critical Humanism in the Age of the Edu-Factory: A Sociology Out of Time?

Daniel Nehring

15 Rights Work and the Social Construction of Rights

Lydia Morris

16 Becoming a Sociologist

Bethany Morgan Brett

PART IV Coda: Song and Dance

17 Mary's Well of Loneliness in Merrily We Roll Along (1981)

Andrew Buchman

18 ‘Some Kind of Paradise’: Narrative Action and Generational Sexualities in Max Vernon’s Musical The View Upstairs (2017)

James Lovelock

19 Encore: Side by Side by Ken

Peter M. Nardi and Nigel South

Biography

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).