Drinks 6.30-7.30pm and Lecture 7.30-9pm

Tickets: £25 including refreshments (click here to book tickets)

In his lecture Professor Zygmunt Bauman will reconsider man’s relationship with his world from the perspective of the stage for which he uses the term  ‘liquid modernity’.

In ‘Civilization and its Discontents’, Bauman suggests, Freud has come to the conclusion that our psychological discomfort arises from a kind of ‘bargain’ we make with the world: we surrender our freedom in exchange for the increase in security offered us by the process of civilization. The cost to be paid is high:  the repression of our drives and the setting up of forms of internal judgment and control; this leaves us constantly prey to unease.

Bauman’s proposition is that the dominant mood of anxiety of our age seems to derive from a reversal of this ‘bargain.’

We have surrendered security in exchange for expansion in the realm of a peculiar freedom that leaves us floating in what he calls a liquid world.  If in the past we longed for freedom, now we long for security. Are we now witnessing a turn of the pendulum? And if so, what consequences might it bring in its wake?

For more information visit Beyond the Couch: The Institute of Psychoanalysis

Liquid Cities
Wednesday 29th August, 1pm – 4pm
Postgraduate Masterclass

with
Peter Beilharz
Professor of Sociology, La Trobe University, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Mark Davis
Director of the Bauman Institute, University of Leeds, UK       
Keith Tester
Professor of Sociology, University of Hull, UK

“Contemporary cities are the battlegrounds on which global powers and stubbornly local meanings and identities meet, clash, struggle and seek a satisfactory, or just bearable, settlement – a mode of cohabitation that is hoped to be a lasting peace but as a rule proves to be but an armistice, an interval to repair the broken defences and re-deploy the fighting units. It is that confrontation, and not any single factor, that sets in motion and guides the dynamics of the ‘liquid modern’ city” – Zygmunt Bauman

“Cities, and particularly mega-cities like London, are the dustbins into which problems produced by globalization are dumped. They are also laboratories in which the art of living with those problems (though not of resolving them) is experimented with, put to the test, and (hopefully, hopefully…) developed” – Zygmunt Bauman

This Masterclass is free to all Postgraduate Students in the School of Sociology & Social Policy at Leeds, but places are limited. To register, please email: m.e.davis@leeds.ac.uk

Abundance has tried to shift the focus of investment from the 1% (who frankly have enough) to the 99% who are short of meaningful choices of things to do with their money which invest for the future rather than add to their debt or material clutter.

We call it democratic finance – and is a clear example of how working with the thinkers like those in the Bauman Institute can inspire change and make a positive impact  in the ‘real world’.

You can read more about it all here in the Guardian article which came out today or go online to www.abundancegeneration.com

Feel free to tweet or get in touch directly with your comments and thoughts or join the debate here, on the Guardian site or at my blog post with ResPublica.

The essence of Chakrabortty’s piece is captured in the strap line: Mainstream economic models have been discredited [true]. But why aren’t political scientists and sociologists offering an alternative view? [the truth is, they are]. Not unreasonably perhaps, the evidence for Chakrabortty’s claim was a seemingly hasty browse through the conference abstracts from the British Sociological Association’s Annual Conference  (held here at Leeds, 11-13 April). In his view, the conference was sadly lacking in addressing the ‘big questions’ of the moment, citing (somewhat unfairly) a single paper from a stream session as somehow emblematic of the entire sociological vocation. An annual conference like this rightly revels in accommodating and representing the diversity of a rich discipline that is proud of its multi-paradigmatic nature and its ability to address all manner of questions about the social world… yes, including the massage industry. But by relying upon a few abstracts – rather than attending the conference itself, which would have been another strategy for anyone genuinely interested / concerned about the vitality of sociology as a discipline – one is likely to get a rather partial view of what is being discussed over the course of a three day event. For example, alongside several conference sessions that debated the sociology of money, the main Plenary Session – an inspiring exchange between Professors Zygmunt Bauman and Michael Burawoy – focussed entirely on the dramatic social, political and economic changes wrought by neoliberalism and closed by establishing an agenda for a discipline that has far more to offer those wishing to understand the present complex of crises than does economics, which remains wedded too closely to established models and ideas (a point Chakrabortty is right to emphasise).

Chakrabortty is, however, also somewhat open to the charge of being too closely wedded to established models and ideas in assuming that sociologists are still locked in the ivory towers of the academy and speaking only to each other at professional conferences. Many sociologists are offering fresh voices in a variety of contexts and it is for them to offer their own response to Chakrabortty’s charge. For our part, since our launch in 2010 we have shown how sociology is now influencing a response to the global financial crisis in a variety of creative ways that might not be immediately available to those who sit down at a search engine in order to gather evidence before passing verdict. In order to “grasp our moment” now that Lehman Brothers has fallen over, as sociologists we have been working with the Council of Europe’s Social Cohesion and Development Division on a project that led to the creation, publication and subsequent ratification by the EC of a new ‘Charter of Shared Social Responsibilities’ that draws directly upon research by sociologists and political scientists in order to offer an alternative to the rampant individualised consumerism of the neoliberal age. We continue to work closely with Compass, new economics foundation, and recently ResPublica, all leading national think tanks that are shaping both intellectual and policy responses to the global financial crisis.

What may come as even more of a surprise to those who share Chakrabortty’s impression of sociology, is that the Bauman Institute is also being consulted by the private sector. This includes working alongside corporate representatives of the global co-operative movement, concerned with the destructive effects of neoliberalism on social capital and community well-being, and in providing the intellectual driving force for innovations in alternative models of social finance, such as Zopa and a new venture Abundance Generation. For example, empowering individuals to see their money as a source of investment-return, rather than just more ‘consumer spending power’, and encouraging that investment to seek returns in community assets that are local and tangible rather than based on the illusory ‘profit’ of the global investment casino, is an innovative way of stimulating the economy in a ‘post-crisis’ context that is providing the foundation for a more resilient social and economic reality. And it is being driven by a specifically sociological understanding of money that has shown how individuals invest for a wider range of reasons – social, ethical and cultural, optimising how money creates wealth for the community – rather than simply seeking profit purely for the sake of it. In other words, the last thing we need is a new economic ‘model’ to adapt or replace the existing neoliberal one. What is needed is a fundamental re-conceptualisation of social life in the twenty-first century and we argue strongly that Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity is the torch that will light our way as we try to navigate the complex realities of a post-crisis era.

The Bauman Institute has provided a space for a form of innovative thinking that has started to prove Chakrabortty’s first point [that economics has failed us], but startlingly to disprove his second point. As an invitation to debate, Chakrabortty’s piece is a valuable contribution to public discussion. It is to be hoped that the subsequent response has shown that sociology has plenty to say about the global financial crisis and how society should best respond to avoid recreating a model of economic life that operates in the interests of an elite few, rather than the many. This may not be apparent simply from a cursory browse through conference abstracts, but if you really want to know how sociology is providing fresh voices, the evidence is out there in abundance.

Leeds Taking Soundings

Dialogues in Politics and Culture

The crisis as an opportunity for a new economy

Speaker: Tim Jenkins

6.00 pm, Wednesday 29 February

Broadcasting Place, Room BP102

Woodhouse Lane,LeedsLS2 9EN

The present crisis is highlighting the urgency of a radical re-design of our economic model. A new economy would require a complete overhaul of the financial sector, would tackle growing social and economic inequalities, and would deal with climate change and the ‘energy crunch’ caused by dwindling oil resources. Tim Jenkins will outline the features of the new economy, and discuss the extent to which the understanding of the need for such economic re-design is still limited in mainstream UK political discourse today.

Our speaker: Tim Jenkins is Director of the Great Transition Initiatives at the New Economics Foundation, London. Formerly he was Policy Director at Friends of the Earth and Head of the Economies Programme at the Sustainable Development Commission.

No need to book

For further information please contact Barry: b.winter@leedsmet.ac.uk

• Bauman Institute Audio Visual Archive.

The Audio-Visual Archive project would not have been possible without the shared vision, generosity and financial support provided by our project partners, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Poland.

We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to everyone involved, especially the director, Pawel Potoroczyn.