On this page there are details of work that I have had accepted for publication but which has yet to appear in print. There are also some details of projects I'm working on at the moment.
Forthcoming work
Refereed journals
'To bring the work to greater perfection': systematising governance in the Church of Scotland 1696-1800, Scottish Historical Review (2014). This article looks at the creation, development, reception and impact of the guidance material debated in the Church of Scotland. It supports the notion I have developed elsewhere of a distinctive systemic approach to authority.
‘Indian Wealth and Agricultural Improvement in Northern Scotland’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies (with Eric Grant), forthcoming (2014/5). In this article me and Eric look at the intertwined careers of General Patrick Duff and Doctor Kenneth Murchison, who both made fortunes in India and both returned home to estates in the north of Scotland.
Book chapters
‘Giddens and structuration theory’ in Adler, P., duGay, P. Morgan, G. and Reed, M. (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Sociology, Social Theory and Organization Studies: Contemporary Currents, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
This chapter has been accepted.
'History and documents in critical realism' in Edwards, O'Mahoney and Vincent, Critical Realism in Practice (provisional title), Oxford University Press, 2014
This chapter in an edited collection draws on my work in both historical and organizational theory journals to provide some practical guidance.
'Administrative practices and the ‘middling sort’: place, practice and identity in 18th century rural England', in Kidd and Tebbut (eds) Peopling the Past: Identity and Place in British History, Manchester University Press. This chapter draws on my work on Nottinghamshire and sets it in the context of wider evidence, drawing in particular on diaries.
Current projects
Church governance
I've not been very successful (well, not at all!) in securing funding to continue my work on church governance practices, but I continue regardless. I am currently deepening my work on eighteenth Scotland, looking at a much broader sample of parishes. I am also looking at the development of discipline at the national level, which is drawing me to the links between Scotland and the Netherlands in the late seventeenth century, especially in the shape of John Erskine of Carnock and Walter Steuart of Pardovan. I've had a number of articles published on this topic; I now want to extend this to a book-length treatment. There's an overview of some of this work on the attached presentation which I gave at Strathclyde University in April 2009. I also want to broaden the scope of my work to consider organizational practices in other major faiths.
Logics and practices
In connection with my work on religion, and informed by my abiding interest in the application of ideas drawn from the tradition of critical realism, I am looking at the notion of 'institutional logics'. In work on how such logics might be made material I have been concerned to counter what I see as an excessively cognitive focus in the literature. Critical realism may help here, but I also want to push the notion of taken for granted practice further. I think that there is a need to elaborate on the category of practice in critical realism and I am working on a number of aspects of this. A paper on this theme that is the text of a talk at the International Association for Critical Realism conference in Nottingham in July 2013 is available from my pages at Academia.org
Information systems
I have expressed my concerns about the notion of 'sociomateriality' in a number of for a, including in the attached presentation from a seminar at the University of Nottingham. I was pleased to be invited to give an address to the Philosophy SIG at the International Conference of Information Systems in Milan in December 2013. No doubt this one will run and run ...
Other matters
I have a huge list of pending projects - pending until I can get some of the matters above attended to! Once finished with those aspects of eighteenth century Scotland that are mentioned above and elsewhere on the site I'd really like to: