Events

Events 2008/9:

PUBLIC LECTURES:

Professor Ulrich Beck, British Journal of Sociology LSE Centennial Professor
'World at Risk: Climate Change, Global Inequalities and the Dilemma of Green Politics'
Wednesday 25th February 2009, 6.30pm, location TBC
How did the global construction of the 'undisputable fact' of man-made climate change become possible? Does climate change radicalise inequalities? Is climate change a 'global opportunity' for a cosmopolitical revival of politics?

Gender Institute Events:
Please click on this link for a complete listing

Past Events:

PUBLIC LECTURES:

Professor Ulrich Beck, British Journal of Sociology LSE Centennial Professor
'A God of One's Own: individualisation and cosmopolitanisation of religion'
Wednesday 13th February 2008, 6.30pm, Old Theatre
Religious movements seen from the angle of societies that have adopted the autonomy of individuals, thereby creating a god of their own.

RECITAL:

Treat your Sweetheart to 'Two Americans in London'
Thursday 14th February, 6pm, Shaw Library, 6th Floor Old Building
Joyce Lorinstein (Sociology Department Manager) and Deirdre L. Tincker, accompanied at the piano by Clive Pollard, introduced by Timothy Taylor. An evening of songs about love by Sondheim, Bernstein, Gershwin and others.
This is a ticketed event - access form using this link (PDF).

HOBHOUSE MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES:

Professor Nasser Hussain -
Global Warfare and Legality: from colonialism to the 'war on terror'
Tuesday 11 March 200, 6.00pm, Clement House, D202
Professor Hussain will discuss 'hyperlegality': a particular kind of legal administration that operates by sub-dividing and classifying people into legal categories, and by creating special commissions and tribunals that fracture the criminal justice system.
Professor Hussain received his B.A. from Yale University and his Masters and Ph.D from the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University and currently teaches at the Department of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College. He is the author of "The Jurisprudence of Emergency: Colonialism and the Rule of Law" (Michigan Press 2003) and of the edited collection Forgiveness, Mercy and Clemency (Stanford 2006).

British Journal of Sociology Public Lecture 2007
Professor Judith Butler
Sexual politics, debates on secularism and the problem of this time: Sexual Politics: the limits of Secularism, the Time of Coalition
Repondent: Professor Chetan Bhatt
Tuesday 30th October 2007, 6.30 pm, Old Theatre
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1984. She is the author of Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (Columbia University Press, 1987), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (Routledge, 1993), The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection (Stanford University Press, 1997), Excitable Speech (Routledge, 1997), Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (Columbia University Press, 2000), Hegemony, Contingency, Universality, with Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, (Verso Press, 2000). In 2004, she published a collection of writings on war's impact on language and thought entitled Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning with Verso Press. That same year, The Judith Butler Reader appeared, edited by Sara Salih, with Blackwell Publishers. A collection of her essays on gender and sexuality, Undoing Gender, appeared with Routledge in 2004 as well. Her most recent book, Giving an Account of Oneself, appeared with Fordham University Press (2005) considered the partial opacity of the subject, and the relation between critique and ethical reflection. She is currently working on essays pertaining to Jewish Philosophy, focusing on pre-Zionist criticisms of state violence. She continues to write on cultural and literary theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism, and sexual politics.

HOBHOUSE MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES 2006/7

Professor Mahmood Mamdani
'The Politics of Culture Talk in the Contemporary War on Terror'.
Hobhouse Memorial Lecture Series
Thursday 8th March 2007, 6.30-8.00pm, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House Building
Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and Political Science at Columbia University, New York. He is also the current President of the Council for Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Dakar, Senegal. Author of, ' When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda'. (Princeton University Press, 2002), Mamdani's reputation as an expert in African history, politics and international relations has made him an important voice in contemporary debates about Africa. He won the prestigious Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association of the USA (1998) for his book 'Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton University Press, 1996). For a transcript of the lecture click here (PDF).

INAUGURAL LECTURES:

Professor Robert Tavernor, Director of the Cities Programme
Inaugural Lecture - Smoot's Ear: The Measure of Humanity
Wednesday 2 May 2007, Old Theatre
In his augural lecture, Robert Tavernor will focus on the various measuring systems human beings have devised over two millennia. He will look beyond the notion that measuring is strictly a scientific activity, divorced from human concerns. Instead, he will set measures and measuring in cultural context to show how deeply they are connected to human experience and history. He will focus on key moments in art, sculpture, architecture, philosophy in relation to body measures and on the development of scientific thought that led to the metric system. The 'rationality' of the metric in turn has inspired artists, architects, writers, and others to seek a balance that takes the human story into account, and he will conclude with some examples of their creative responses. His book, bearing the same title, will be published by Yale University press in the spring of 2007.

Professor Paul Gilroy, Anthony Giddens Professor in Social Theory
Inaugural Lecture - 'Multi-culture in Times of War'
Wednesday 10 May 2006
Britain's 'multi-culturalism' was officially pronounced dead in July 2005. The speaker will explore elements of its afterlife. This lecture will discuss some ways of approaching the social and cultural life of Britain's diverse polity which do not derive from the currently influential idea that civilisations are in conflict. Arguments on the one hand for the revival of empire and, on the other, for a new mode of assimilation, form the framework of Professor Gilroy's observations.

Professor Sarah Franklin, Professor of the Social Study of Biomedicine
Inaugural Lecture -The Reproductive Revolution: how far have we come?
Thursday 24th November 2005 at 6.00 pm
Old Theatre, LSE
Professor Franklin was appointed to a chair in the social study of biomedicine at the School in September 2004, and is one of the founders of this field. Her work has received international acclaim for its originality and breadth, and she is one of the leading figures in the social and cultural analysis of new reproductive and genetic technologies.

Professor Ulrich Beck, LSE Centennial Professor
'A Cosmopolitan Perspective on the Sociology of Generations'
Wednesday 14th February 2007, 6.30pm, Old Theatre
The space of experience of the younger generation is no longer fixed to the nation-state. Therefore, sociology needs to overcome 'methodological nationalism'.

Research seminars

Professor Patrick Joyce
The Soul of Leviathan: rethinking the history of the British State
Tuesday 22^nd May 2007 at 5.30 - 7.00 pm
Room S75 (St Clements Building)
Patrick Joyce is Professor of Modern History at the University of Manchester and Visiting Professor of Sociology at the LSE. He has held visiting professorships and fellowships at, among others, University of California, New York University, the Max Planck Institute, Göttingen. He has published widely on the history of work, class and popular politics, in recent times developing an interest in historical aspects of governmentality, particularly in relation to materiality, resulting in a recent book on the city, and current work on the state. Recent publications include Visions of the People (Cambridge 1991); The Oxford Reader on Class (Oxford 2001; The Social in Question (London 2001); The Rule of Freedom (London 2003).
He also works in the area of social theory and historiography, and has contributed to debates on history and postmodernism. His current work in progress on the state, ‘The Soul of Leviathan’, represents a rethinking of the British state since the early 19th century in terms of the nature of governance and material power. He is also writing a general history of Britain since 1800, ‘Freedom and the British’. LSE Sociology's One-Hundredth Anniversary Celebration

On Friday 13 May, 2005, the Department hosted a very successful all-day Centenary Event (PDF) in the Old Theatre. You can still download a copy of the programme (PDF) by using this link. Shortly there will be a link to Alumni Relations to view pictures of the proceedings, exhibitions and social activities during the event. Please note that the papers provided below in PDF format, are not necessarily a full or verbatim account of what was said or might eventually be written as a paper.
The present is the future - Bev Skeggs
LSE Sociology 1945-1965 - Jennifer Platt
LSE and British sociology: the early history - Michael Banton
The 1960s and thereafter - Lydia Morris
The 1960s and thereafter - Mary Evans