Research in Sociology

5-7 Sep 2014: Racism: From the Labour Movement to the Far-Right

Date: Fri 5-7 Sep 2014
Time: 12:00
Venue: Western Infirmary Lecture Theatre

Conference website: http://racismconference14.wordpress.com

Register here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/racism-from-the-labour-movement-to-the-far-right-tickets-11857826077

Taking two overlapping developments as its starting point – namely the continuing mutation and expansion of racism into new ‘cultural’ forms, above all in the form of a virulent Islamophobia; an dthe electoral consolidation of parties of the far-right, who are not always fascist, but committed to deeply reactionary positions on most social issues, above all in relation to migration – the scheduled papers will focus on such themes as:

• Race, gender and class in the neoliberal workplace
• The social basis of the populist far-right in Europe, including the racisms of such political formations
• Refugees, asylum and migration
• Racism, multiculturalism and citizenship in Europe, including the racialization of Muslims 
• Imperialism and its legacies in Scotland; including anti-Irish racism and the employment inequalities faced by different racialized minority groups
• Theorizing racism and anti-racism including historical perspectives on the sometimes convoluted relationship between anti-racism and the socialist Left

We are delighted to announce that the keynote lecture will be given by Professor Floya Anthias (University of East London) on ‘Intersectionality and the Struggles against Racism’. Professor Anthias’ research explores different forms of stratification, social hierarchy and inequality, and how they interconnect, paying specific attention to racism, diaspora and hybridity, multiculturalism, gender and migration, labour market disadvantages and class position.

There are also two exhibitions planned for the conference. The first draws on work carried out by Dr Sundari Anitha (University of Lincoln) and Professor Ruth Pearson (University of Leeds) entitledStriking Women. This celebrates the catalytic role played by South Asian women in two industrial disputes in the Greater London area – the strike at Grunwick between 1976 and 1978 and the dispute at Gate Gourmet that erupted in 2005. Through images, text and interviews, the exhibition locates these disputes in the wider context of South Asian women’s activism in the workplace.A second display – prepared by Honor Hania, the Subject Librarian for Sociology at the University of Glasgow – will present documents outlining the role played by Scotland, and especially Glasgow, in the British Empire. This exhibition will include images and texts which highlight and demonstrate Scotland’s connections to the slave trade and anti-slavery movements, as well as the University’s historical connections to Africa and the Caribbean. The display will also feature materials from the Glasgow University Library’s Black History Month exhibition.

The first day will conclude with two book launches. Wilf Sullivan, Head, Race Equality at the TUC will discuss Satnam Virdee’s new book, Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider, while David Renton, Barrister at Garden Court Chambers will introduce Neil Davidson’s jointly edited collection, The Longue Duree of the Far-Right.

For further information please visit the conference website: http://racismconference14.wordpress.com

Contacts

• Minna Liinpää: m.liinpaa.1@research.gla.ac.uk
• Maureen McBride: m.mcbride.2@research.gla.ac.uk

16-17 Sep 2014: Stretching the Sociological Imagination: John Eldridge Festschrift Conference

Date: Tue 16-17 Sep 2014
Time: 15:00
Venue: East Quad Lecture Theatre, University of Glasgow

This conference intends to honour and discuss the work inspired by the eminent sociologist: John Eldridge.  Eldridge was for many years both Professor of Sociology and Head of Department at the University of Glasgow and is a renowned figure in the discipline through his research; most notably his contribution to three areas.  The first of these is the sociology of work and industry.  Eldridge wrote or co-wrote many highly-influential texts in this field, such as Industrial Disputes, and Just Managing: Authority and Democracy in Industry (with Cressey and MacInnes),whilst also co-founding the Centre for Research in Industrial Democracy and Participation. The second is social theory where Eldridge has published key texts on thinkers such as Max Weber, Raymond Williams and C. Wright Mills.  The final is the sociology of media.  Eldridge was one of the founders of the Glasgow Media Group which continues to produce internationally-renowned research. His contributions can be found in multiple texts, including the path-breaking Bad News, as well as other important volumes produced by the Group.  In addition to this, he was also President of the British Sociological Association from 1979-1981 and central to discussions with the UK government which led to the reorganisation of the Economic and Social Research Council in 1983, after a threat to remove the ‘Social’ entirely from the title.  Throughout, Eldridge has had an intellectual debt to Mills’ conception of the sociological imagination, which inspires the title of this conference. Such a debt is demonstrated not just in his monograph on Mills, but in the many fertile theoretical arguments in his other works, as well as his much-loved teaching. Over the years Eldridge has been hugely admired by his students for his accessible and succinct formulations of sociological thought and we hope the conference will emulate this spirit.  In particular, a celebration of his work provides a valuable occasion to reflect on what it means to apply the sociological imagination today.

For further details, and to register, see: http://eldridgeconference2014.wordpress.com/

29 Sep 2014: Conflicting relations: Adolescent girls and violent behavior’

Date: Mon 29 Sep 2014
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 717, Adam Smith Building

Speaker: Dr Judith Ryder, St John’s University, New York, SCCJR Visiting Fellow

Dr. Ryder has a broad background in criminology with a concentration in violence and trauma among adolescents. Her scholarship focuses on young people in particular social situations deeply stratified by gender, race and class, considered within psychosocial and feminist theoretical frameworks. She is the author of Girls and Violence, Tracing the Roots of Criminal Behavior (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013).

Abstract: This seminar explores manifestations of violence in girls’ lives through the lens of significant early relationships and resultant internal conflicts.  It investigates connections between violence perpetuated by and against adolescent girls, and the importance of locating girls’ interpretations of violence in the context of dynamic relational processes. Analyzing interview data from teenagers charged with assault or robbery and remanded to a New York State residential youth facility, Dr. Ryder  integrates psychosocial theory concepts, particularly attachment theory and the effects of chronic trauma, to construct a theoretical model of the dynamics underlying girls’ anti-social behaviors. 

For further information about SCCJR events visit www.sccjr.ac.uk/events/

1 Oct 2014: Taste and the Everyday

Date: Wed 1 Oct 2014
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Presenter: Prof. Ben Highmore (University of Sussex)

In this talk I will try and do two things. First I will look at various theories about taste and the way that the term has come to primarily describe a subject’s positioning within a stratified society. The most influential example here is the social thought of Pierre Bourdieu, where taste is a cultural practice that is performed as a symbolic activity. Second I will investigate the possibility of thinking about taste as a material and sensual activity of intimate world-making, and thereby of offering an alternative way of thinking about taste, one that isn’t limited to the symbolic realm. My argument is that it is this alternative approach that is more sensitive to the role that taste plays in everyday life.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Matt.Dawson@glasgow.ac.uk

15 Oct 2014: Just Emotions? Rituals of Restorative Justice

Date: Wed 15 Oct 2014
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Presenter: Dr. Meredith Rossner (LSE)

Restorative justice scholars and practitioners offer a compelling argument for its widespread implementation, citing the potential to repair the harm of a criminal offense and reduce offending.  At the same time, there is evidence that it can have no effect or even make things worse. My work attempts to address these conflicting findings by analysing the micro level dynamics of how restorative justice encounters work as a unique form of justice ritual.  This talk will examine the main findings of my recent book on rituals in restorative justice, presenting a theory of restorative justice that focuses on the dynamics of the encounter, participants' emotional, linguistic, and bodily rhythms, and the development of solidarity or division within the group.  The approach involves a contrasting systematic empirical program, including a combination of qualitative interviews, detailed observations of discourse, face and demeanour, and quantitative analysis of systematically observed conferences.  I offer an explanation of how rituals unfold dynamically in space in time, and how these emotional trajectories may impact subsequent offending.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Matt.Dawson@glasgow.ac.uk

28 Oct 2014: 'To Exploit a Larger World to Conquer': C.L.R. James's Intellectual Conquest of Imperial Britain

Date: Tue 28 Oct 2014
Time: 17:15
Venue: Seminar Room, Lilybank House

Presenter: Dr. Christian Høgsbjerg (York)

Joint seminar with Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements

Together with other critical Pan-Africanist figures such as his fellow compatriot George Padmore, the black Trinidadian revolutionary socialist - and former cricket correspondent for the Glasgow Herald - C.L.R. James led from the front as an ideological agitator in the fight against British imperialist mythology and propaganda during the 1930s: “Traditional England was under fire. And it was the regular habit of a number of us colonials to go to public lectures and meetings of some of the most celebrated lecturers and speakers in England and at question time and during discussion tear them to pieces.” This paper will explore how James - a black colonial subject turned from an identification with ''imperial Britishness'' to a more radical transnational identification with black people internationally – militant Pan-Africanism – after arriving in depression-hit Britain in 1932, and orientated from liberal humanism towards revolutionary socialism.  It will then examine how James mediated his revolutionary Marxist and Pan-Africanist agitation in 1930s Britain over questions such as Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia as well as writing his masterful work recovering the world historic significance of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins (1938).  If Eric Williams could later claim, “I had come, seen and conquered—at Oxford!” when he graduated with first-class honours in 1935, this paper will suggest that with the publication of The Black Jacobins, James could with equal legitimacy have claimed that he had come, seen, and intellectually conquered the larger world of imperial Britain.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Matt.Dawson@glasgow.ac.uk

29 Oct 2014: Tragedy in the Commons: Animal Welfare Vs Libertarian Activism Online

Date: Wed 29 Oct 2014
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Presenter: Dr. Adam Reed (St. Andrews)

This paper operates through a juxtaposition of ethnographic examples from my anthropological work in Britain. The contrast is prompted by a symposium invitation to consider how ‘commoning’ arises and for whom. It is not, however, a straightforward account of what is ‘meant by the commons today’. The hesitation is due to the fact that I never encountered the term as an ethnographic category, nor saw it deployed as an explicit metaphor among the peoples I worked with. While they had much to say about the ‘implications of things held, managed and imagined “in common”’, no one directly invoked the historical language of public goods. In what follows, the metaphor is therefore mine; the essay is in part an exercise in reading ‘the commons’ back into popular talk and action around what was, is or ought to be conceived as ‘common’ between them. My ethnographic examples are chosen because in these cases discussions appear to coincide with dramatic moments of identified expansion or shrinkage of common worlds. I am interested in the degree to which ‘tragedy’ may be attached not just to the contraction of what is held in common, but to the very practice of commoning itself, or imagining oneself sharing something in common with another.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Matt.Dawson@glasgow.ac.uk

11 Nov 2014: The Stigma Doctrine: Social and Political Economies of Inequality in Post-Welfare Britain

Date: Tue 11 Nov 2014
Time: 17:15
Venue: Seminar Room, Lilybank House

Presenter: Dr. Imogen Tyler (Lancaster)

Joint seminar with Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements

Extending work begun in Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain (2013), this paper will outline my new research project on the social and political function of stigma in ‘post-welfare’ Britain. In The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007), Naomi Klein details the ways in which ‘the policy trinity’ of neoliberalism, ‘the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending’ has been enabled through the invention and/or exploitation of crises, be they natural disasters, terrorist attacks or global economic recession. My new project, The Stigma Doctrine, revises Klein’s analysis by researching the claim made by the Loïc Wacquant, and extended in Tom Slater’s recent work on territorial stigma, that neoliberalism is characterised by ‘heightened stigmatization in daily life and public discourse’ (Wacquant, 2010). Focusing on the (re)production of stigma, this project aims to develop an account of the ways in which neoliberal modes of government operate not only by capitalizing upon ‘shocks’ but through the production and mediation of stigma. In this paper I will outline and illustrate aspects of the five aims of this new research project: 1) to develop a new theoretical account of function of stigma in the context of the post-welfare consensus; 2) to examine the inter-play between stigma and growing inequalities (economic, social and cultural); 3) to develop new methodological approaches to the study of stigma; 4) to explore the policy implications of The Stigma Doctrine with policy practitioners, artists and activists; and 5) to deepen public understanding of the social and political role of stigma in generating a post-welfare consensus, and in maintaining and reproducing inequalities.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Matt.Dawson@glasgow.ac.uk

26 Nov 2014: An Intersectional Approach to Analysing Intercultural Communication in Health Care Settings: Findings from Glasgow

Date: Wed 26 Nov 2014
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Presenter: Dr. Teresa Piacentini (Glasgow)

How do health care providers respond to increased and multidimensional diversification?  What does this mean for effective intercultural communication in health care settings, in both clinical settings and the community?  In this paper I will explore how increased diversity challenges traditional models of communication in health care provision that have largely focused on language as the main barrier to accessing services. In this paper, I empirically engage with theories of intersectionality and super-diversity to ground an analysis of experiences of intercultural communication in interpreter-mediated health care settings in Glasgow. Since the 1990s, the city has experienced unanticipated demographic shifts due to the wider context of rapidly increasing intra-European mobility, an increasing number of migrants who are permanently or temporarily settled in the Scotland, and that the city is the primary UK dispersal area for asylum seekers outside of London.  This diversity is revealed not just in terms of more ethnicities but in other factors and multiple variables of difference in the immigration status, age, education, socio-economic background, and of course language of new migrants, all of which present a number of challenges to the practices and experiences of health-care delivery in intercultural and multi-lingual contexts.  Although a super-diversity perspective is relatively novel in health research, multiple factors such as language, ethnicity, age, class and gender co-condition health and integration outcomes are well-evidenced.  Presenting different perspectives from health care practitioners, interpreters and service users, I aim to firstly explore the value of the super-diversity perspective to this study, and secondly move beyond a simplistic focus on language barriers to unpack the ways in which health outcomes are co-conditioned by intersecting migratory, ethnicity and socio-demographic variables.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Matt.Dawson@glasgow.ac.uk

28 Nov 2014: Selma James: Women, Race and Class: The Fight for Real Equality

Date: Fri 28 Nov 2014
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Selma James will speak on 'Women, Race and Class: The Fight for Real Equality'

James is a women's rights and antiracist campaigner and author of The Power of Women & the Subversion of the Community; Women, the Unions and Work, or What Is Not To Be Done; Sex, Race & Class; Marx and Feminism; Strangers & Sisters: Women, Race and Immigration and other studies and interventions. Raised in a movement household, she joined CLR James’s Johnson-Forest Tendency at age fifteen, and from 1958 to 1962, she worked with him in the movement for Caribbean federation and independence. In 1972, she founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign, and in 2000 she helped launch the Global Women's Strike, which she coordinates. She coined the word 'unwaged' to describe the caring work women do, and it has since entered the English language to describe all who work without wages, on the land, in the home, in the community, and more. In 1975 she became the first spokeswoman of the English Collective of Prostitutes. She is a founding member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (2008). Selma James addresses the power relations within the working class movement, and how to organize across sectors despite divisions of sex, race, and class, South and North.

This event is co-hosted with African Caribbean Cultures Glasgow and the Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory & Movements

21 Jan 2015: Considering Emma: Queer Feminist History and Affective Method

Date: Wed 21 Jan 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Presenter: Prof. Clare Hemmings (LSE)

My recent work on ‘feminist stories’ has drawn me towards thinking through Emma Goldman’s significance for contemporary gender and sexual politics. Goldman was an anarchist activist and thinker (1869-1940) who spent her life engaged in these question, but who did not identify as feminist; who was as insistent on the centrality of women’s emancipation to revolution as she was on the limits of the franchise. I am intrigued about what kind of history of feminist theory and practice might flourish if Goldman were to be included in that history, but without needing to reframe her as a feminist first in order to do so. I find Goldman helpful in thinking through this tension today, since a claim of ‘not being a feminist, but…’, particularly in young women, tends to be dismissed simply as apolitical or as a sign of the waning significance of a hard-fought for feminism, rather than approached as part of how people have long negotiated their dissatisfaction with gendered and sexual norms. Might Goldman help me to think through a contemporary feminist politics that does not rely on a feminist subject (of whatever gender), or endorse nostalgia for clearer feminist times order to make its claims?

Co-hosted with the Gender and Sexualities Forum

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Francesca.Scrinzi@glasgow.ac.uk

4 Feb 2015: The New Middle Class from Vanguard to Social Neoliberalism

Date: Wed 4 Feb 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Presenter: Neil Davidson (Glasgow)

During the Occupy movement one of its key slogans drew attention to the conflict of interests between the 1% and the 99%. While this was undoubtedly effective in identifying the relative smallness of the global ruling class, it was sociologically quite misleading in suggesting a degree of common interest among the 99%. Neoliberalism, like all earlier variants of capitalism, could not have survived without a social base much wider than the groups constitutive of the 1%. As is usually the case, a section of the middle classes were key, in this case the group variously referred to as the salariat, the technical-managerial strata, or the New Middle Class (NMC). This paper examines the shifting basis of NMC support for the neoliberal project as it moved its vanguard 'transformationalist' phase, associated with Thatcher, Reagan and Pinochet, to its social 'consolidationist' phase, associated with Blair, Clinton and, in Scottish terms, Salmond. I will attempt to show that the key achievement of the latter for capital was the way it generated previously resistant public sector and cultural NMC support for the economic aspects of neoliberalism, mainly by emphasizing social questions and particularly those concerning personal identity. I will conclude by exploring the extent to which this support has been eroded by the crisis which began in 2007-8.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Francesca.Scrinzi@glasgow.ac.uk

10 Feb 2015: The Bolshevik Response to Anti-Semitism in the Russian Revolution, 1917-1919

Date: Tue 10 Feb 2015
Time: 17:15
Venue: Lilybank House Seminar Room

Presenter: Brendan McGeever

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the high point of class struggle in the twentieth-century. It brought about a profound explosion of political mobilisation around issues of class exploitation and other related forms of oppression that remains unprecedented, even today. In the very moment of revolution, however, the Bolsheviks were almost immediately forced to come face-to-face with mass outbreaks of anti-Semitic political violence in the shape of pogroms, which spread across the vast regions of the Western and South-Western borderlands. The pogroms posed fundamental questions of Marxist theory and practice, particularly since they revealed the nature and extent of working class and peasant attachments to anti-Semitic and racialised forms of consciousness. Based on extensive fieldwork in Russian and Ukrainian archives, this paper has two aims: first, it offers a broad analysis of the nature of the articulation between anti-Semitism and the revolutionary process; and second, it offers the first ever in-depth analysis of Bolshevik attempts to arrest these articulations. Contrary to existing understandings, the paper reveals that the ‘anti-racist agent’ in the Soviet response to anti-Semitism was not the Bolshevik party leadership, as is often assumed, but a small grouping of non-Bolshevik Jewish socialists who coalesced around the peripheral apparatuses of the Soviet state. Having recovered this hitherto unrecognised anti-racist praxis from a moment of world historical significance, the paper concludes by reflecting on how this reframing of the Russian Revolution might offer insights for anti-racists and socialists engaged in struggles for social justice today.

Seminar co-hosted with the Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Francesca.Scrinzi@glasgow.ac.uk

18 Feb 2015: Young Adulthood and the Negotiation of Race in Contemporary Britain

Date: Wed 18 Feb 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Presenter: Dr. Bethan Harries (Manchester/CODE)

Western cities are becoming more ethnically diverse and in many places becoming more youthful. The relationship between youth, young adulthood and race is undergoing significant social change. While some cogent areas of research such as education studies and cultural studies have maintained a focus on race and ethnicity, in youth and young adulthood studies more widely, ‘post-subculture’, race has been significantly absent (Harries et al forthcoming). This represents an oversight in social research.  This paper draws on research with young adults and examines their relationship to and experience of living in a post-industrial cosmopolitan city. The city enables us to recognise the multiple ways in which racism manifests and explores the paradox that becomes apparent when the contemporary city is imagined as a tolerant multicultural space, i.e. beyond race, but is also a space through which race is reproduced. The paper considers how these conflicting processes are dealt with by young adults and examines the effects of the disjuncture between rhetoric and reality; between people’s lived experience (of discrimination, racism and unequal treatment) and the growing discourse that says race no longer matters. Crucially, it considers whether strategies to silence race make it difficult to name racism, rather than working, as is sometimes the implied intention, as an anti-racist device.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Francesca.Scrinzi@glasgow.ac.uk

4 Mar 2015: Neither Pink Nor Blue: Marine Le Pen, Parity, and French Right Wing Populism

Date: Wed 4 Mar 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Presenter: Dr. Dorit Geva (Central European University)

This paper draws from ethnographic research and interviews with members of the French National Front.  I interrogate how party members view Marine Le Pen, the party’s leader, as embodying a corrective to the European Union’s policies of austerity, and the shadowy, abstract workings of Brussels (and French) neoliberal technocratic governance.  Although members of the National Front consistently deny that Marine’s gender matters to them, I argue that the gendered political symbolism around her matters a great deal.  FN adherents frequently celebrate Marine’s beauty.  Furthermore, as one interviewee memorably commented, they see her as “wearing the party’s history on her skin.”  I argue that as the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party’s longstanding President, her blood lineage and her feminine corporality tie her symbolically to the party, and to French sovereignty, blood, and terroir.  Marine’s lineage and corporality are therefore in themselves viewed as a riposte to the opaque, technocratic “men in suits" of the European Union and France’s political elites. She is also seen as a “modern woman,” in contrast to the supposed backwardness of Muslim immigrants.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Francesca.Scrinzi@glasgow.ac.uk

18 Mar 2015: Understanding Changes in Family Caregiving for Disabled Older Americans, 1982-2012

Date: Wed 18 Mar 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Room 916, Adam Smith Building

Presenter: Dr. Alex Janus (Edinburgh)

How has family caregiving for disabled older Americans changed over the past three decades and what factors explain these changes? To answer these questions, I use data from the 1982-2005 waves of the National Long-Term Care Survey and the 2000-2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to obtain nationally representative estimates for disabled older people 65 and over. I find that hours of family caregiving declined by almost half during the 1990's but has remained unchanged more recently. Using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, I pay particular attention to the role of family structure and other factors related to caregiver availability in explaining these trends. I discuss my findings with reference to other changes families are undergoing and long-term care policy.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Francesca.Scrinzi@glasgow.ac.uk

24 Mar 2015: David Frisby Memorial Lecture: Making Sense of the Crisis: Is the financial crisis cascading into a democratic crisis in Europe?

Date: Tue 24 Mar 2015
Time: 17:00
Venue: Sir Charles Wilson Lecture Theatre

This year's David Frisby Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Prof. Sylvia Walby (UNESCO Chair in Gender Research, University of Lancaster).

The European nightmare is that economic crisis leads to the re-emergence of ethno-nationalism and fascism, with violence engulfing democratic institutions. Potentially, the crisis, starting in finance in the US and UK in 2007, cascading into the real economy of output and employment, cascading into fiscal crisis and 'austerity', and cascading into political crisis, will become a crisis of democracy in the European Union.  Sociology did not see the crisis coming and has struggled to produce adequate analyses of its various phases and of its political dynamics.  What are its gender dynamics and why do these appear invisible to Sociology? The developments challenge traditional systems theory as well as the recent 'cultural turn'.

Using the insights of complexity theory, I re-work core Sociological concepts and theories: re-thinking rather than rejecting the concept of system; re-thinking the concept of society in a globalizing world; developing the concepts of 'tipping point' and path dependency; rethinking the intersection of gender, class and ethnic inequalities and of political projects.  These enable a more adequate account not only of the changes in capital, but also of the gendered nature of the neoliberal project that is challenging social democracy. 

Free to attend and open to all.

For further information on this lecture series see http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/research/sociology/frisbymemoriallectures/

2 Jun 2015: Reputations, Canons and Public Intellectuals

Date: Tue 2 Jun 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Lecture Theatre B, Boyd Orr Building

Presenter: Neil McLaughlin (McMaster University, Hamilton Ontario, Canada)

"There is a rich literature on the social and historical mechanisms that create dominant academic canons as well some work on the less studied processes that create forgotten intellectuals and schools of thought, but too little of this deals systematically with how public engagement shapes reputations. Drawing on case material on Erich Fromm, Noam Chomsky, and C Wright Mills alongside a systematic data set from the 1950s, I will address the issue of predecessor selection and canon formation alongside the newer debate on the public intellectual."

Neil McLaughlin teaches sociological theory at McMaster University, in Hamilton Ontario, Canada. He writes about the sociology of public intellectuals, public sociology, the sociology of knowledge and ideas, and critical theory. He had published in such journals as Cultural Sociology, Sociological Theory, The Canadian Sociological Review, The Sociological Quarterly, The Sociological Forum and The Canadian Journal of Sociology.  Born in Glasgow, raised in Montreal and educated in New York City, he is pleased to be engaging in a transnational intellectual dialogue.

All are welcome.

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.

Any enquiries about this event can be addressed to: Francesca.Scrinzi@glasgow.ac.uk

16 Jun 2015: The Present Situation for LGBTI People in Uganda

Date: Tue 16 Jun 2015
Time: 17:00
Venue: Yudowitz seminar room 1, Wolfson Medical Building, University of Glasgow

Speaker: Dr. Frank Mugisha (Executive Director, Sexual Minorities Uganda)

Presentation followed by conversation with Dr. Matthew Waites, Q&A and discussion.

All are welcome at this event

On 17 June Dr Frank Mugisha, Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award Laureate (2011), will be awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of the University (DUniv) at the University of Glasgow, on Commemoration Day.   This award follows Dr. Mugisha’s address as Keynote Speaker at the LGBTI Human Rights in the Commonwealth conference held at the University on Nelson Mandela Day 18 July 2014, as a partnership between Glasgow Human Rights Network, Equality Network, Kaleidoscope Trust and Pride Glasgow (videos of the event including Dr. Mugisha’s address are available from the conference website).

On 16 June the Glasgow Human Rights Network, in partnership with the Gender and Sexualities Forum, is hosting a special event for Dr. Mugisha to speak on ‘The Present Situation for LGBTI People in Uganda’.  The event will be chaired by Dr. Matthew Waites, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and co-editor (with Corinne Lennox) of Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change (School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2013; free online at: http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/publications/house-publications/lgbt-rights-commonwealth).

The event will take place in three parts.  First, Dr. Mugisha will make a presentation on the present situation in Uganda and international responses.  Second, Dr. Mugisha will engage in conversation with Dr. Waites on several questions, particularly on how the LGBTI movement struggles in Uganda relate to UK and transnational politics and LGBTI activism.  Thirdly there will be substantial time for questions and open discussion involving everyone attending; it is intended that this final section will be informal and an open forum, including for activists/NGOs to discuss current developments and collaborative strategies and support.

Scott Cuthbertson, Development Coordinator of Equality Network will comment on Equality Network's international work.

Background and reading

'Unnatural offences' concerning 'carnal intercourse against the order of nature' have been prohibited by legal statutes in Uganda since their creation by the British Empire in 1902.   In 2009 the 'Anti-Homosexuality Bill' was introduced into the Uganda parliament, initially proposing the death penalty for 'aggravated homosexuality' and known as the 'Kill the Gays' bill. A later revised version removed the death penalty. On 24 February 2014, after the bill's passage through parliament, President Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act into law.  However on 1 August 2014 the Constitutional Court in Uganda ruled the Act invalid due to parliament not being quorate when passed. A further bill called The Prohibition of Promotion of Unnatural Sexual Practices Bill was drafted in 2014.        

A history of the Uganda LGBTI movement's struggle and legal issues is provided by Adrian Jjuuko 'The incremental approach: Uganda's struggle for the decriminalisation of homosexuality', Chapter 14 in Corinne Lennox and Matthew Waites eds. (2013) Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change (London: School of Advanced Study).  Free online.