Events & Seminars
The Sociology Seminar Series is supported by the MacFie Bequest, named after Professor Alec MacFie, Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy at the University from 1945 to 1958.
All enquiries about the seminar series and zoom links please contact Tim Winzler.
The seminars will take place 2-3pm. The first five seminars will be in-person (all to be held in the Hunterian Gallery 103), the last two online (linkTBC).
11/10/2023 – Nasar Meer (University of Glasgow)
Title: Methodology and migration in cities of hopes and fears
Abstract:
In this seminar Professor Nasar Meer explores the need to re-think two coterminous concerns: the rediscovery of the ‘local’ and the city in particular, and an understanding of the experience of displaced migration in Europe. Drawing on Bauman’s (2003) distinction between ‘cities of fears’ and ‘cities of hopes’, Nasar asks what a focus on the ’local’ can tell us about recent developments in the governance of displaced migrants and refugees. Taking a multi-sited approach spanning cases in the south and north of Europe, Nasar discusses the challenge of housing and accommodation in particular, to consider how local and city level approaches may reproduce, negotiate and sometimes significantly diverge from national level policy and rhetoric, and what these means for our assumptions about the capacity of cities today.
Speaker Biography:
Professor Nasar Meer is co-Investigator of The Impacts of the Pandemic on Ethnic and Racialized Groups in the UK (ESRC) and Principal Investigator of the Governance and Local Integration of Migrants and Europe's Refugees (GLIMER) (JPI ERA Net / Horizon-2020). He was a Commissioner on the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Post-COVID-19 Futures Inquiry, a Member of the Scottish Government COVID-19 and Ethnicity Expert Reference Group. He Chairs the Stuart Hall Foundation Academic Committee and Network of Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Fellows and is co-Editor of the Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. He recent publications include The Cruel Optimism of Racial Justice (2022) and The Impact Agenda: Controversies, Consequences and Challenges (co-authored, 2020).
Suggested Readings for Seminar:
Meer, N., Dimaio, C., Hill, E. et al. Governing displaced migration in Europe: housing and the role of the “local”. Comparative Migration Studies 9, 2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-020-00209-x
Meer, N., Hill, E., Peace, T. & Villegas, L (2021) Rethinking refuge in the time of COVID-19, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44:5, 864-876, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2020.1855359
18/10/2023 – Mariya Ivancheva (University of Strathclyde)
Title: Book talk: The alternative university. Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela.
Abstract:
Over the last few decades, the decline of the public university has dramatically increased under intensified commercialization and privatization, with market-driven restructurings leading to the deterioration of working and learning conditions. A growing reserve army of scholars and students, who enter precarious learning, teaching, and research arrangements, have joined recent waves of public unrest in both developed and developing countries. Yet even the most visible campaigns have rarely put forward any proposals for an alternative institutional organization.
Based on extensive fieldwork in Venezuela, The Alternative University outlines the origins and day-to-day functioning of the colossal effort of late President Hugo Chávez's government to create a socialist university that challenged national and global higher education norms. Through participant observation, extensive interviews with different groups involved and archival inquiry, Mariya Ivancheva historicizes the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, the vanguard institution of the higher education reform, and examines the complex, often contradictory policies and practices that turn the alternative university model into a lived reality.
This talk will link the book to Ivancheva’s more recent work, to open a debate on the future of the university in the era of neoliberal globalization, and discuss inspirations and challenges that face alternative higher education projects.
Speaker Biography:
Dr Mariya Ivancheva, Senior Lecturer at Strathclyde Institute of Education, is an anthropologist and sociologist of higher education and labour. Her academic and research-driven advocacy work focus on the casualisation and digitalisation of academic labour, the re/production of intersectional inequalities at universities and high-skilled labour markets, and the role of university communities in broader processes of social change especially in transitions to/from socialism. Mariya has carried out historically grounded and theoretically informed ethnographic fieldwork and interdisciplinary research in different regions of the world, including Eastern and Western Europe, South America, and Southern Africa. As an engaged scholar she has been a member of several research-led platforms, working on topics such as anti-racism, labour rights, gender, and financial justice.
Suggested Readings for Seminar: (max. 2, please hyperlink DOI wherever possible/alternatively, you can also send me a working paper via email which I can distribute in my information email before the seminar)
Apostolova, R., & Ivancheva, M. (2023). The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela: an interview. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2023.2241622
Ivancheva, M. (2020). The casualization, digitalization, and outsourcing of academic labour: A wake-up call for trade unions. FocaalBlog. http://www.focaalblog.com/2020/03/20/mariya-ivancheva-the-casualization-digitalization-and-outsourcing-of-academic-labour-a-wake-up-call-for-trade-unions/
25/10/2023 – Karolina Augustova (University of Glasgow)
Title: Four seasons of border violence: the co-option of the seasons into the management of migration (Co-written with Thom Davies (University of Nottingham) and Arshad Isakjee (Liverpool University))
Abstract:
From ocean currents to rivers, deserts, and mountains, the natural environment is often weaponized into border controls against people homogeneously racialized as “irregular migrants''. This paper is based on our observation that direct violence used during pushbacks – illegal forced returns over a border – are enforced as well as resisted in the context of seasonal shifts; natural processes that have been side-lined in the migration-violence literature. Based on ‘four seasons of ethnography’ with survivors of pushbacks at the border between Turkey and Iran (EU external borders) and the borders between Croatia with Bosnia-Herzegovina (EU internal borders), we introduce a novel intervention demonstrating how border violence either co-opts with seasonal shifts or is fully externalised to extreme weather elements. We argue that state decisions to physically attack people are called into action when the weather itself fails to do so, or externalise violence to the zone of weather when seasonal shifts allow for it. Yet, we also show that migrants are not only survivors of the environmentally-co-opted violence but also use weather changes in their favour to challenge border controls, avoid detection, and finalise their journeys. Our contribution presents a novel analysis of border violence as a longitudinal, cyclical process with distinct temporalities that is enforced through direct beatings by state officials, and evolves across the seasons.
Speaker Biography:
Karolina joined the University of Glasgow in August 2023 as a lecturer in Sociology. Her ethnographic research examines the European Union's migration externalisation in (post) conflict zones, violence, and human smuggling. She has conducted ethnographic research in refugee camps and borders in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kurdish region in Turkey. Currently, Karolina is conducting research on refugee hosting and its impacts on the life in Schengen border regimes in post-Soviet countries, namely Czechia.
Karolina's book Everyday Violence at the EU's External Borders: Games and Push-Backs was published in June 2023 with Routledge Intervention Series. Alongside academic publications, Karolina writes policy reports and provides commentaries to media (The Guardian, Aljazeera, Politico, VICE News, The New Humanitarian, Open Democracy and others).
Suggested Readings for Seminar:
- WP to be shared before the seminar
- WP to be shared before the seminar
08/11/2023 – Adnan Hossain (University of Glasgow)
Title: Male femininities, pleasures and power: Re-understanding the hijras in South Asia
Abstract:
Based on long-term ethnographic research with hijras, the emblematic figure of South Asian sexual and gender difference, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, this talk proposes the hijra as a counter-cultural formation that embodies not only a direct contrast to hegemonic patterns of masculinity but also as an alternative subculture offering the possibility of varied forms of erotic pleasures and practices otherwise forbidden in mainstream society. While most studies view hijras as an asexual, emasculated, third sex/gender, this talk calls into question the phallocentric logic that obscures alternative sites and sources of bodily power and pleasure, emphasizing how hijras craft their own subject position. A focus on hijras allows us to critically re-examine not only a range of ‘male femininities’ but also the way categories of gender and sexuality are mobilized in the construction of global south sexual/gender subjects in general.
Speaker Biography:
Adnan Hossain is an interdisciplinary social scientist with interest and expertise in gender and sexual diversity, masculinities, transgender and intersex studies, heterosexualities, race and ethic relations, body politics, nationalism, decolonization, postcolonial studies, cricket, epistemology and global inequalities in knowledge production. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Bangladesh, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. He is the author of ‘Beyond emasculation: Pleasure and Power in the Making of Hijra in Bangladesh' (Cambridge University Press, 2021 and Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performances across Borders in South Asia collaboratively authored with scholars across boundaries of disciplines (Methuen drama, a Bloomsbury imprint, 2022). He was a European Research Council-funded postdoctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam. He held visiting fellowships at Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS) at the university of the west indies, St. Augustine campus and at Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS) at the University of Amsterdam. Prior to joining the university of Glasgow, Adnan Hossain was an assistant professor of gender studies and critical theory at Utrecht University.
Suggested Readings for Seminar:
Hossain, A. (2020). Hijras in South Asia: Rethinking the dominant representation. In Z. Davy, A. C. Santos, C. Bertone , R. Thoreson, & S. E. Wieringa (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Global Sexualities (Vol. 1). SAGE. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529714364
Hossain, A. (2021). Introduction: Pleasure, Power and Masculinities. In Beyond Emasculation: Pleasure and Power in the Making of hijra in Bangladesh (pp. 1-25). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009037914.001
22/11/2023 – Babak Amini (University of the West of Scotland)
Title: Dissident Social Theorists in the First World War Era: Antonio Gramsci and György Lukács
Abstract:
Many of the founding figures of social sciences, including Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, George Simmel, W. E. B. Du Bois, George Herbert Mead, among others, were intellectually and politically active during the First World War. Albeit notable differences in the form and extent of their involvement in the war process and the impact of the war on their intellectual development, they generally supported the war effort. However, a small segment of “heterodox” thinkers, such as György Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, Rosa Luxemburg, and Ernst Bloch, took on a dissident perspective on the war. This paper focuses on how the engagement with the war impacted the ideas of Gramsci and Lukács by examining their published works, journalistic writings, and personal correspondence during the war and in the immediate postwar years.
Speaker Biography:
Dr Babak Amini is a lecturer in social sciences at the University of the West of Scotland and a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. He is the co-editor (with Thomas Kemple) of a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Classical Sociology, entitled “Classical Sociology and the First World War”. He is also the author of the forthcoming monograph, “The Making of Council Democracy: A Comparative Analysis of Germany and Italy” (Routledge, 2024) and the co-editor (with Marcello Musto) of the forthcoming “Routledge Handbook of Marx's Capital: A Global History of Translation, Dissemination and Reception” (Routledge, 2024). His research area includes comparative political sociology of radical movements, history of ideas and their global dissemination and reception, as well as critical state theory and social movement studies.
Suggested Readings for Seminar:
06/12/2023 – Loïc Wacquant (University of California, Berkeley) (Online-Seminar)
Title: Symbolic Power and the scholarly myth of the “Underclass”
Abstract:
Drawing on Bourdieu and Koselleck, I retrace the birth, peregrinations and demise of the academic folk devil of the “underclass” in the dual metropolis of the fin de siècle. I use this case in urban demonology to dissect the formation of scholarly myths, uncover the springs of conceptual bandwagons and draw out some lessons for the epistemology of urban marginality and concept formation in social science.
Speaker Biography:
Loïc Wacquant is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Researcher at the Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Sciene Politique. His books are translated in twenty languages and include Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (expanded anniversary edition, 2022), The Invention of the Underclass: A Study in the Politics of Knowledge (2022), Bourdieu in the City: Challenging Urban Theory (2023), and Misère de l’ethnographie de la misère (2023). For more, see loicwacquant.org.
Suggested Readings for Seminar:
Wacquant, L., & Vandebroeck, D. (2023). Carnal concepts in action: The diagonal sociology of Loïc Wacquant. Thesis Eleven, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136221149782
Wacquant, L. (2022). Epistemic bandwagons, speculation, and turnkeys: Some lessons from the tale of the urban ‘underclass.’ Thesis Eleven, 173(1), 82–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136221121705
13/12/2023 – Michele Lamont (Harvard University) (Online – joint seminar with the journal Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power )
Title: Seeing Others: How Recognition Works―and How It Can Heal a Divided World
Abstract:
In this seminar, Professor Michèle Lamont will discuss her new book which explores the power of recognition—in rendering others as visible and valued—by drawing on nearly forty years of research and new interviews with young adults, and with cultural icons and change agents who intentionally practice recognition—from Nikole Hannah Jones and Cornel West to Michael Schur and Roxane Gay- showing how new narratives are essential for everyone to feel respect and assert their dignity. Seeing Others: How Recognition Works―and How It Can Heal a Divided World, details how Decades of neoliberalism have negatively impacted our sense of self-worth, up and down the income ladder, just as the American dream has become out of reach for most people. By prioritizing material and professional success, we have judged ourselves and others in terms of self-reliance, competition, and diplomas. The foregrounding of these attributes of the upper-middle class in our values system feeds into the marginalization of workers, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and minority groups. The solution, Professor Lamont advances, is to shift our focus towards what we have in common while actively working to recognize the diverse ways one can live a life. Building on Lamont’s lifetime of expertise and revelatory connections between broad-ranging issues, Seeing Others delivers realistic sources of hope: By reducing stigma, we put change within reach.
Speaker Biography:
Michèle Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University. A cultural and comparative sociologist, she is the author or co-author of a dozen books and edited volumes and over one hundred articles and chapters on a range of topics including culture and inequality, racism and stigma, academia and knowledge, social change and successful societies, and qualitative methods. She co-chaired the advisory board to the 2022 UN Human Development Report, “Uncertain times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a World in Transformation” and directed the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University (2014-2021). She now leads its research cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion. Recent honors include a Carnegie Fellowship (2019-2021), a Russell Sage Foundation fellowship (2019-2020), the 2017 Erasmus prize and honorary doctorates from six countries. She served as the 108th President of the American Sociological Association in 2016-2017.
Suggested Readings for Seminar:
Lamont, Michèle. (2018). Addressing Recognition Gaps. American Sociological Review, 83(3): 419-444. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48588666
Meer, Nasar and Lamont, Michèle. (2016). Michèle Lamont: A Portrait of a Capacious Sociologist. Sociology, 50(5): 1012-1022. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038516646283