{"id":108,"date":"2017-12-20T19:48:59","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T19:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/?p=108"},"modified":"2019-11-08T22:28:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T22:28:38","slug":"a-year-in-pasts-and-futures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/2017\/12\/20\/a-year-in-pasts-and-futures\/","title":{"rendered":"A YEAR IN PASTS AND FUTURES"},"content":{"rendered":"

A look back at our meetings in 2017. Originally published here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the last year we have had lively reading-based discussions and two great talks from invited speakers. The cluster played a key part in the Sociology symposium Fragile Citizenship<\/span>, and cluster discussions generated the idea for a one-day conference reflecting on meritocracy.<\/p>\n

Two recent discussions focused on history and how the past gets drawn into the present in biographical, communal and cultural narratives. On 13th December 2017 James Cummings, Ursula Balderson and Yang Li reflected on historicity, using Hirsch and Stewart\u2019s (2005) article \u2018Introduction: Ethnographies of Historicity\u2019<\/span> (History and Anthropology 16(3): 261-74) as a starting point. It was fascinating to think about how this concept offered resources for James to think about gay men\u2019s lives and biographical narratives in China\u2019s Hunan province; for Ursula\u2019s engagement with communities campaigning against mining pollution in the Andes; and Yang\u2019s research on film representations of Tibet.<\/p>\n

On 19th November 2017 we had a Sociology seminar from the cluster\u2019s invited speaker, Felix Ringel (Anthropology, Durham)<\/span>. Felix\u2019s discussion of \u2018presentism as method\u2019 used ethnographic material from two German cities to critically engage with the way the social sciences have conceptualised the past and the future, and drew an interesting response from Dariusz Gafizcjuk. The book on which Felix\u2019s talk was based is out now.<\/p>\n

Cluster members played prominent parts in Sociology\u2019s March 2017 conference Fragile Citizenship<\/span>. We organised a round-table discussion beginning with an intensely engaging talk about urban social history, music, and multicultural futures from Les Back<\/span> (Goldsmiths). Post-grad cluster member James Cummings<\/span> gave a fantastic talk based on his PhD work investigating belonging in the everyday lives of gay men in Hainan, and Diana Kopbayeva<\/span> reflected on the notion of the \u2018eternal nation\u2019, which recently rose to prominence in Kazakhstan\u2019s projects of nation-building.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the year we had a couple of meetings focused on visions of the future and questions of social change. On 24th May 2017 Geoff Payne and Ruth Graham offered contrasting views on a still-resonant post-war vision of a more meritocratic (and less just?) future: Michael Young\u2019s The Rise of the Meritocracy<\/em><\/span>. On 8th March 2017 Lisa Garforth and Robert Hollands discussed the everyday transformative practices analysed in Davina Cooper\u2019s 2014 book Everyday Utopias<\/em>, and how artists and activists work for urban change, looking at Mould\u2019s Urban Subversion<\/em>.<\/span> This meeting provided an interesting context for the talk on 3rd May 2017 from the cluster\u2019s invited Sociology Seminar speaker Prof David Pinder (Roskilde) which explored utopia, time and vitality in urban spaces and practices.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A look back at our meetings in 2017. Originally published here. In the last year we have had lively reading-based discussions and two great talks from invited speakers. The cluster played a key part in the Sociology symposium Fragile Citizenship, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7558,"featured_media":117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}