On Weds 12th June Philippe Boudes will be joining us for an informal talk at the meeting point of sociological theory, rural studies, science studies and environmental studies. Co-hosted by Imagining Pasts and Futures and Newcastle’s Centre for Rural Economy, the talk is ‘Between disciplines and interdisciplinarity: bringing sociology, science and environment together’, 12-2pm 12th June Agriculture Building AGRB.3.02.

Abstract: ‘In this presentation I explore how, starting with a very classical academic curriculum, sociology can contribute to interdisciplinary research on environmental and rural issues. Specifically, I explore how sociology can respond to instrumental and policy demands relating to the management and public understanding of those issues. How do we work within an interdisciplinary context which is often limited by demands for operational results? Rather than stay too strongly rooted in my discipline or, by contrast, favour a pro-interdisciplinary posture, I propose a new approach. This is based on trying to « live » my discipline – not denying the diversity of other disciplinary approaches, but recalling always the need to keep in mind the fully social significance of the topics studied. I illustrate this approach with reference to my research on public goods, on the greening of cities, and on river restoration. I show in each case how the contribution of sociology has allowed not only new conceptual inputs with respect to these different issues, but also to the formalization or enrichment of concepts within Sociology, including Simmelian approaches to the city and theories of recognition.’

25th March 2019 was our last scheduled cluster meeting of the semester. We were absolutely delighted to welcome Joanne Sayner to talk about her recent work on culture, centenaries and difficult pasts that she is doing in collaboration with Jenny Kidd (Cardiff). Their research has looked closely at the poppy exhibition which has toured the UK for the centenary of WWI, and in our session raised some fascinating and difficult questions about cultural institutions and commemoration, and how people might be able to think about what the poppy means beyond ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig).

Joanne is Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Heritage Studies here at Newcastle. She works on the politics of remembering in contemporary culture. With our own Anselma Gallinat and also Sarah Jones (Birmingham), she is currently Co-I on the AHRC project ‘Knowing the Secret Police: Secrecy and Knowledge in East German Society.’

It was great to welcome Prof. Paul Chatterton for the Sociology Seminar on Weds 27th February 2019. Paul was the cluster’s invited speaker this semester.

As well as being Professor of Urban Futures and Director of the Sustainable Cities Group at the University of Leeds, Paul is a writer, researcher and campaigner. He is co-founder and resident of the award-winning low impact housing co-operative Lilac and helped set up Leeds Community Homes to help promote community-led housing.

In his new book Unlocking Sustainable Cities and in the talk Paul presents a manifesto for real urban change. The book highlights how cities are locked into unsustainable and damaging practices, and how exciting new routes can be unlocked for real change. Across the world, city innovators are putting real sustainability into practice – from transforming abandoned public spaces and setting up community co-operatives, to rewilding urban nature and powering up civic energy.

The talk set out a number of proposals for immediate radical possibilities for more sustainable cities. A lively discussion afterwards explored the scope for change in a world of infrastructural lock-in and entrenched capitalist power and culture – and the ways in which in small ways as teachers and researchers we can contribute to a greener and more just future.

On Nov 21st please join us for a talk about contemporary utopian thought  4pm, ARMB.2.49.

David Bell, Lisa Garforth and Adam Stock will be talking about their recent books which reflect respectively on utopian politics, affect and performative practices; green utopian visions and post-war environmental discourse; and dystopian fiction and political thought:

Rethinking Utopia

Green Utopias

Modern Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought

The three speakers share a background in utopian studies and the conversation will  also explore issues in contemporary utopian theory, practice and politics.

One of the really interesting contributions to our Discover Society special issue is the piece by David Civil (Nottingham) exploring the history of Young’s concept in relation to mid-century histories of sociology and politics.

David is one of the team organising a discussion in Nottingham next week: Meritocracy in Perspective: The Rise of the Meritocracy Sixty Years On . The panel features Toby Young, Nick Timothy, Faiza Shaheen and Helen Goulden. Free event; register online.

Back in April colleagues in Imagining Pasts and Futures organised a one-day conference reflecting on the idea of meritocracy 60 years after Michael Young published the book that put the term into wide circulation. With guest speakers Jo Littler, Nicola Ingram and Daniel Smith we explored meritocracy as ideology and discourse; merit as a social quality and value; the concept of meritocracy in relation to education, policy and work; the history of the idea in sociology and politics; and the kinds of futures that the idea of meritocracy does and does not make imaginable.

Discussions at the event were stimulating, interesting – and sometimes challenging.

We are delighted to announce that one outcome of that event is a special issue of the online journal Discover Society. It was a pleasure working with colleagues from Newcastle (Geoff Payne, Ruth Graham, Anselma Gallinat and Angus McVittie – well done Angus on a first publication! – and Lisa Garforth in Sociology; Samantha Shields in ECLS; and an honorary shout to Kirsty Morrin, UG at Newcastle not that many years ago and now lecturing at Liverpool) and beyond to produce this wide-ranging, critical, reflective and above all readable set of short articles. We encourage you to read and enjoy!

Thanks to the BSA Sociology of Education Study Group for helping us with the April event.

Originally published here.

Thanks to stalwart cluster members James Cummings and Audrey Verma, as well as first-time visitor Katy Lamb, for a fantastic cluster meeting on Weds 14th February. James, Audrey and Katy talked from their research projects about the vastly different capacities of a range of social actors to imagine alternative liveable futures through reflections on pasts that were narrated in terms of loss, pain – and also joy.

Memorials and futures of Equal Justice: Katy is an UG student in the Combined Honours programme and joined us to talk about recent fieldwork in Montgomery, Alabama. Katy won Ncl university funding to conduct research relating to the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. Katy’s work helped us to think about the power of commemoration and especially of material objects to rework the past in the present, to make the invisible visible. Here the aim is to inject a new and uncomfortable narrative into the history and historiography of the US and into its contemporary cultural life, adding something distinct to recent debates which have often focused on the removal of Confederate statues and markers.

Katy talked movingly about the museum’s planned National Memorial for Peace and Justice which features displays of soil taken from lynching sites in the museum (seen in the photo here which Katy took during her visit). Katy is working with ideas about the connotations of soil as dirtying and its etymology which is related to wallowing; but also about its links with growth, grit, life-support and renewal. Katy’s reflections on soil, memory and imagined futures also evoked ideas about digging up the past both as a metaphor and as the physical labour involved in locating and recovering these lost sites.

Katy has been drawing on these readings to make sense of this material: Forsdick C (2015) Travel, slavery, memory: thanatourism in the French Atlantic. Postcolonial Studies 8790(March): 1–15. Buzinde CN and Santos CA (2008) Representations of slavery. Annals of Tourism Research 35(2): 469–488. Ebron PA (1999) Tourists as Pilgrims: Commercial Fashioning of Transatlantic Politics. American Ethnologist 26(4): 910–932.