“We are little Gods who shit” – Ernest Becker (from @Ursies)

“You judge a society by the decency of living of the weakest” – Zygmunt Bauman (from @PaulWilks)

“either one lives for politics or one lives off politics” – Max Weber (from @JTKwok)

“Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?” – George Bernard Shaw (from @Tia1972oxo)

“All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas” – Immanuel Kant (from @nmcinroy)

“Sociology is something that you do, not something that you read” – Erving Goffman (from @joremification)

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point is to change it” – Karl Marx (from @Stuart_Hepburn)

“It is the role of ideas in politics and society, the power of intellect, that most fascinates me as a social analyst” – C. Wright Mills (from @mark_carrigan)

Discourses of Dissent was a one day symposium organised by SI’s editor in February 2011. The website hosting them is soon to lapse so SI will be the new home for the videos from the day. In light of the coalition government’s austerity agenda and the emerging movement against it, Discourses of Dissent asked how academic research can help inform and sustain political resistance

A round table session investigating how academic research, with a particular focus on social theory, might help us articulate and work towards a positive vision of shared futures which escape the discursive constraints which have defined the public life of the UK since the 1980s.

The session will also explore the practical resolution of the tensions facing the university system. What are the most pressing issues faced by universities? Is a satisfactory resolution of these tensions possible without radical reform? Is there a need to move beyond critique?

Steve Fuller, University of Warwick – What are we defending when we defend public universities?

Dan Hind – Media Reform and the Public University

John Holmwood, University of Nottingham – The idea of the public

Discourses of Dissent was a one day symposium organised by SI’s editor in February 2011. The website hosting them is soon to lapse so SI will be the new home for the videos from the day. In light of the coalition government’s austerity agenda and the emerging movement against it, Discourses of Dissent asked how academic research can help inform and sustain political resistance

A round table session exploring how social theory can help us understand the politics of austerity. How do theoretical justifications of austerity work to constrain public debate? How does the current government’s incongruous blend of neoliberal realism and superficial progressivism relate to what went before it? What resources can we find in social theory to critique the coalition’s agenda and its relationship to the wider crisis of late capitalism?

Ruth Levitas, University of Bristol – The necessity of utopian thinking

Sasha Roseneil, Birkbeck, University of London – Criticality, not paranoia: Registers of critical social theory

Karen Rowlingson, Institute of Applied Social Studies, University of Birmingham – Why doesn’t the British public seem to care about inequality or the cuts in public spending?

• “Deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label.”

  Howard Becker in Outsiders (submitted by Yaz Osho)

• “Taste classifies and it classifies the classifier.”

  Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction (submitted by Sam Lyle)

• “The sense of freedom and the actual freedoms which are upsetting the old picture of family life and encouraging the search for a new one, is not an individual invention but a late child of the labour market.

  Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim in The Normal Chaos of Love (submitted by Katrina Cimetta)

Are you interested in being a Postgraduate Forum Convenor?

Our existing team work together to make sure that student members of the Association are kept up-to-date with matters of specific interest to them. They will also facilitate contact between student members and the BSA Council. In return for their hard work and dedication.

Postgraduate Forum Convenors are offered a free place at BSA events and all travel expenses are reimbursed.

The Convenors’ tasks include:

• Circulating information to other postgraduates via the PG Forum email distribution list
• Maintaining the PG Forum pages of the BSA website & the Facebook fan page.
• Supporting and hosting PG Focus podcasts
• Making contributions to Network
• Assisting with the processing of BSA Support Fund applications by joining the panel of members who grant awards from the Fund
• Helping organise the Postgraduate workshops/events at the BSA Annual Conference
• Representing the interests of Postgraduate members at Council meetings

Since the PG Focus podcasts were launched to great success in 2009, they have become an increasingly important part of the PG Forum activities. We are therefore particularly interested in having someone join us who has knowledge about, or an interest in learning, skills relating to the compiling, editing, uploading, and online maintenance of the blog and PG Focus podcasts.

The successful applicant will work with current convenors to become
proficient at assisting with the online and media aspects of the PG Forum’s activities. The new convenor(s) will also share other duties, including attending on average one Council meeting and two PG Forum meetings per year; quickly and efficiently dealing with email correspondence regarding Support Fund applications and other business; overseeing the organization of a session for the PG Day and spearheading new initiatives that will benefit the PG Forum community.

While the time commitment for this role is flexible, with responsibilities shared between convenors, and the workload varies over the year, applicants can expect to devote between 4 and 16 hours per month to PG Forum
responsibilities.

If you have questions about what being a convenor entails, please contact us at PGForum@britsoc.org.uk

Include a letter explaining why you think you are suitable for this role.
Deadline for applications: 1 March 201