Mathematicians’ tastes had been reliable. Monty Python. Escher. Fugues. And when they said “let’s go for coffee”, mathematicians meant it. Sociologists dwelt in the imaginary. Coffee might not happen. Unless they'd bring on the revolution, pleasures were guilty and idiosyncratic. A sociologist of education collected snow domes. A labour researcher collected sneakers. A feminist smoked Sobranies. An interviewing methodologist kept artisanal chocolate in her stationery drawer, behind the Post-Its. A rumpled Frankfurt School theorist admired Vivienne Westwood and shared obscure punk music like the Greater Thans. And the careful scholar of Vietnamese refugees knew far too much about Octopus Paul.
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