Stories, Imaginations and Sociology

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 testifies 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, 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.

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).