Socio-Artistic Futures

Our 'Socio-Artistic Futures' programme is envisaged as a way of revisiting and opening up the longstanding dialogue between sociology and the arts, broadly defined, particularly in a context of polycrisis, and in light of what might be termed a nascent ‘speculative turn’ in social theory. It will provide a vehicle for exploring general questions such as: What is the place of speculation and anticipation in social theory? What might social theorists learn from speculative engagements in the arts? What advantages do speculative approaches in the arts possess in the public understanding of climate crisis and ecological breakdown?

Rather than being obsessed with its image of science pure and simple, students of the social should not be shamed of the intimate affinity of their work to that of art: they should summon the courage necessary to experiment, to devise new, unheard-of forms of human life, which may reveal and bring to blossom unsuspected aspects of the rich human personality. Like the artists broadens and enriches our aesthetic sensibility and opens our eyes to the kind of beauty we would otherwise never suspect, the student of the social may open our eyes to the kinds of life we would otherwise hardly suspect, and thanks to that he may widen our horizons in such a way that our ‘reality’, to which we are routinely exposed, is reduced to its true historical proportions - Zygmunt Bauman, 'Is a Science of the Possible Possible?'