Newcastle University

Professor Les Back, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Researching Community and its Moral Projects

Wednesday 30th September 2009

Download (MP3, 50mb)

The study of community is a key area of concern in sociology and anthropology. In this paper it is argued that community should be understood as a moral project as well as a state of affairs or a set of social relationships. Through reviewing the current debate on the 'death of multiculturalism' the political and ethical dimensions of research practice are explored. The paper argues for the development of a cosmopolitan method that reworks the relationship between technology, art and critical social science. Accounting for the complexities of community require a research imagination that is supple enough to attend to the interplay between local and global levels in order to find new ways of describing how people live in and across social divisions. Drawing on 20 years of research on the meanings of community in south London the paper explores the limits of interviewing and quantitative measures as they apply to social cohesion or social capital. It argues for a sensuous mode of scholarship in which the social relations of sound, smell, touch and taste can alert us to the ways in which community is inhabited and lived. The aspiration of this sensuous and multimodal agenda for researching community is to create vital forms of research that capture the conflicts as well as the opportunities that arise in city life.

Professor Mike Savage, ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), University of Manchester

Cultural Division and Belonging in Contemporary Britain.

Wednesday 14th October, 2009

Download (MP3, 46mb)

This paper is a further contribution to the recent work on the 'spatialisation of class', the way that 'shapes on the ground' become loaded with social and cultural significance (Savage et al 2005; Burrows and Parker 2006). I seek to demonstrate how issues of residential mobility and the attachment to place are not just matters which might interest planners, urban geographers or sociologists, but are profoundly important for understanding the meaning of contemporary inequality, especially its cultural and symbolic aspects, as people jostle with each other in their search for homes and territory. I pursue this theme through examining the narratives which different sorts of people articulate in talking about their attachment to their residential locale. Building on arguments first developed in Globalisation and Belonging I assess the scope of what Gaynor Bagnall, Brian Longhurst and I called 'elective belonging', the way that middle class people claimed moral rights over place through their capacity to move to, and put down roots, in a specific place which was not just functionally important to them but which also mattered symbolically.

Dr Adam Haupt, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Hip-Hop Activism and the Networked Public Sphere.

Wednesday 1st of December, 2009

This recording is a Public Lecture on the same theme that Dr Adam Haupt gave at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa in July 2009 (entitled 'Hip Hop Activism vs Bling').

Download (MP3, 59mb)

Cultural theorists have made a great deal about the ability of artists and activists to produce counter-hegemonic discourses, particularly in the face of claims about the failure of news media in their role as the fourth estate in a functional democracy. Scholars, such as Yochai Benkler, have also written quite positively about the notion of the 'networked public sphere' in opposition to mass-mediated publics. Indeed, work by artists like Saul Williams, Mos Def, Immortal Technique and even Eminem demonstrate the extent to which these claims are true - especially when their work features on Web 2.0 platforms, such as YouTube, in the form of fan videos. But these ideas are limited in the African context, where the digital divide is rather wide and in a context where the four major music labels exert a great deal of global influence. This paper will consider some of the ways in which South African hip-hop artists attempt to constitute more than just communities of hip-hop fans, but attempt to engage subjects in what Jurgen Habermas calls rational-critical debate about the common good. Hip-hop artists engage in both online and offline strategies so that the notion of the 'networked public sphere' really becomes what Nancy Fraser terms subaltern counterpublics that are constituted by traditional media as well as digital and mobile media strategies. Benkler's description for the decentralised way in which subjects communicate and network on the Internet therefore becomes a metaphor for the ways in which hip-hop artists engage hip-hop heads in a number of media and platforms. In essence, hip-hop activists work creatively within the inequitable limitations placed upon them by corporate globalisation in their efforts to produce counter-hegemonic messages.

Feminism, Sexuality and Parenthood: Angela McRobbie, Róisín Ryan-Flood and Yvette Taylor in conversation.

Professor Angela McRobbie, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Dr. Róisín Ryan-Flood, University of Essex

Dr. Yvette Taylor, Newcastle University

Wednesday 9th December, 2009

Download (MP3, 67mb)

This dialogue focused on the recent books of Ryan-Flood and Taylor.

Lesbian and Gay Parents: Securing Social and Educational Capitals.

Dr Yvette Taylor

Much current work on lesbian and gay kinship still overlooks the significance of socio-economic status. This book explores the intersections between class and sexuality in lesbians' and gay men's experiences of parenting and the everyday pathways navigated therein, from initial routes into parenting and household divisions of labour, to location preferences, schooling choice and community supports. In a context of international legal changes, it seeks to situate parents as both sexual and classed subjects, interrogating the relevance of class and sexual (dis)advantages. Frequently lesbian and gay families are positioned at the vanguard of transformations in intimacy while often empirically absent in such declarations: they are misplaced in this dual over-emphasis (as agents of social change) and sidelining (under-investigated when compared to the research on heterosexual families). This book utilizes the concept of social capital, combining a Bourdieusian notion of capital as specifically classed, alongside that evidenced in the 'families of choice' literature. The theoretical opposition of different frameworks of 'social capital' advances class conceptualisations, exploring too the ways that(middle) classed capitals sometimes do not pay off, as a result of occupying non-normative sexualities.

Lesbian Motherhood : Gender, Families and Sexual Citizenship.

Róisín Ryan-Flood

This timely book explores the 'lesbian baby boom'. Drawing on interviews with lesbian parents in two European countries, Sweden and Ireland, the book examines reproductive decision-making, reproductive healthcare, the everyday spaces of parenthood such as daycare and schools, the negotiation of biology and kinship in families where only one partner is the biological parent, and the possibility for a more flexible approach to gender relations within these families. A rich analysis reveals fascinating findings concerning family formation and social exclusion. Lesbian parents in Sweden had a strong preference for a donor-father, who was actively involved in parenting. In contrast, Irish women largely preferred donors to be completely uninvolved in raising children. This reflects wider cultural discourses about gender and 'the family'. Rather than reduce the analysis to a consideration of the extent to which these families conform to or subvert wider hegemonic discourses, the book argues for an approach to sexuality, kinship and citizenship that avoids such binarisms. This original book offers a unique resource for scholars and students within a range of disciplines, including family studies, gender studies and queer theory.

Professor Stephen Mennell, University College Dublin

American Individualism and its Consequences for the World (Including the Credit Crunch).

Wednesday January 20th, 2010

The paper will be concerned both with the causes and the consequences of the individualism that is so strongly rooted in the USA. If "individualisation" is evident in Europe from the Renaissance onwards, why has it taken such an extreme form in America? Its repercussions have been widespread but also paradoxical. Sheldon Wolin has spoken of an "inverted totalitarianism". And free market ideology, a ripe fruit of individualism, has led to a fundamental truth being overlooked: that markets are structures of unequal power. America is a highly unequal society and becoming more unequal. Thus, contrary to Norbert Elias's expectation that "functional democratisation", bringing with it pressures towards increasing foresight, would be a master trend of the modern world, the USA has undergone simultaneous processes of functional de-democratisation and diminishing foresight. This is fundamentally linked to the master trend of American history: of the USA steadily become more and more powerful in relation to its neighbours, which has systematic distorting effects on perception.

Download (MP3, 71mb)

Dr. David Lehmann, University of Cambridge

From multiculturalism to interculturalidad.

Wednesday February 10th, 2010

Since 1992 indigenous organizations and indigenous rights have figured prominently on the agenda of Latin Americanists, of Latin American anthropologists, of multilateral institutions, and NGOs, and in certain nooks and crannies of the policy-making world.  This has produced a congeries of ideas relating to citizenship, social equality, the politics of recognition, and anti-discrimination. Although the trend appears to reflect the growing influence of the term ‘multiculturalism’, in fact most writing and policy has adopted the term interculturalidad. The underlying question in this paper is why, more or less sub-consciously and certainly without elaborate discussion, this term has caught on, and what it tells us about the Latin American approach to race and ethnicity-based social exclusion and also the political and intellectual response to the political demands of indigenous leaders. The paper will focus principally on Mexico and Peru, and will also touch on the quota policies introduced by the Brazilian state, notably in Higher Education.

Download (MP3, 80mb)

Dr Gregory Elliot. Visiting Fellow, Newcastle University

Enigmatic Variations: Eric Hobsbawm Yesterday and Today

Wednesday 3rd March, 2010

Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes has been characterised an an 'anti-Fukuyama'. It conceded the momentous defeat suffered by the left at the close of the short twentieth century, while rejecting the notion that the collapse of communism marked the 'end of history' in a definitive triumph of capitalism. Paradoxically, however, with the defeat of his own ideology, Hobsbawm seems since the early 1990s to have gravitated towards a version of the 'end of ideology' thesis promulgated by the modernisation theorists of the 1950s and 60s, which may be regarded as a forerunner of the Fukuyama thesis.

Download (MP3, 38mb)

Feminist Theories of Embodiment, Relationality and Affect with Vikki Bell, Rebecca Coleman and Carolyn Pedwell.

Wednesday 10th March, 2010

This session took form of a discussion, led by Professor Vikki Bell, of the recent and forthcoming books by Dr. Rebecca Coleman (The Becoming of Bodies: Girls, Images, Experience) and Dr. Carolyn Pedwell (Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison) (Abstracts below).

Prof. Vikki Bell, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Vikki Bell is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.  Her research interests include contemporary social and cultural theory; feminist theory, ethics and politics; the production and regulation of sexuality, racialised and gender difference; performativity; political rhetorics; transitional justice; and the social and legal regulation of childhood. Vikki Bell is an editorial board member of the international journals Theory, Culture & Society and of Social and Legal Studies. She is the author of Culture & Performance: The Challenge of Ethics, Politics and Feminist Theory (Berg: 2007); Feminist Imagination: Genealogies in Feminist Theory (Sage: 1999); Belonging and Performativity (edited collection) (Sage: 1999); and Interrogating Incest: Feminism, Foucault and the Law (Routledge: 1993).

Dr. Rebecca Coleman, Lancaster University

Book Abstract: Coleman, R. (2009) The Becoming of Bodies: Girls, Images, Experience (Manchester UP)

The relationship between bodies and images has long occupied feminism. The Becoming of Bodies explores the way in which this relationship has primarily been approached and offers an alternative framework for analysis. Thinking through her original empirical research with teenage girls, involving focus groups, individual interviews and image-making sessions, Coleman moves from a consideration of media images, the focus of much feminist research, to examine images more widely; as mirrors, photographs, glimpses, comments, imagination. Addressing issues of appearance and selfhood, sex and gender, and temporality, the book takes a Deleuzian position to argue that bodies and images are not separable entities, but rather entangled processes of becoming. It asks the question: how do bodies become through images?

Dr. Carolyn Pedwell, Newcastle University

Pedwell, C. (2010) Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison (Routledge)

Within both feminist theory and popular culture, establishing similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural and geo-political contexts (e.g. 'African' female genital cutting and 'Western' cosmetic surgery) has become increasingly common as a means of countering cultural essentialism, ethnocentrism and racism. Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice examines how cross cultural comparisons of embodied practices function as a rhetorical device - with particular theoretical, social and political effects - in a range of contemporary feminist texts. It asks: Why and how are cross-cultural links among these practices drawn by feminist theorists and commentators, and what do these analogies do? What knowledges, hierarchies and figurations do these comparisons produce, disrupt and/or reify in feminist theory, and how do such effects resonate within popular culture? Taking a relational web approach that focuses on unravelling the binary threads that link specific embodied practices within a wider representational economy, this book highlights how we depend on and affect one another across cultural and geo-political contexts.

Download (MP3, 70mb)

One with the birds? Listening through recording and imitation

Wednesday March 17th, 2010

This paper compares sound recording and imitation of bird sounds both in terms of their constitution as activities and in terms of how they influence the ways that people listen. Throughout human history people have imitated the sounds of birds, for a wide variety of reasons. In the past century, recording technologies have come to enable the capturing of bird sounds for further listening and scientific analysis. Both of these practices invite people to listen to birds in particular ways and also invite comparison with other practices of observation and recording. The paper explores various examples of imitation and recording as practiced by scientists, birders, artists and sound recordists, primarily in Britain but also in Brazil. The twin technological development of sound recording and sonograms has created a powerful tool for the analysis and comparison of bird sounds, enabling scientists and birders to scrutinise sound by sight. These insights can then be incorporated into more detailed listening. Sound recording thus bears comparison with photography as a means of preserving and examining. It also enables the vocalising of birds to be turned into aesthetic objects for enjoyment and contemplation. Imitation, on the other hand, bears comparison with drawing because it involves the sketching of sounds in ways that are sometimes rough and impressionistic, and sometimes startling in their individuality and accuracy. The skilled bird imitator attends not just to the sound but to the ways of singing. This paper thus argues that both practices can, in different ways, draw the listener further into the world of birds and their own sound-making practices.

Download (MP3, 47mb)

Dr. Nina Wakeford and Joe Malia

Collaborative Interventions: Dialogues between Design, Ethnography and Sociology

Wednesday April 28th, 2010

This was a very special occasion as this seminar launched the 'Interventions' Project: www.interventions.org.uk, where researchers from the HaSS Faculty with backgrounds in social geography, sociology, social anthropology have been collaborating with design practitioners specialising in product design, communication design, interaction design, service design and architecture.

Dr. Nina Wakeford - From Intel Research to Studio Sociology

In this talk I will outline the collaborative work with industrial partners that my research group INCITE has been developing since 2001. Beginning with a project which used the route of the number 73 bus in London as a way to understand technology and urban experiences, we have sought not only to question the way designers and engineers understand the social scientific study of new technologies, but also to challenge sociological ways of knowing and collaborating. One such collaboration, on which the current Newcastle workshop is based, was the pairing of sociologists and designers from the Royal College of Art. I am now developing of the idea of Studio Sociology, which looks to non-representational modes of working and doing such collaborations (e.g. installations, film, performance).

Download (MP3, 35mb)

Joe Malia - Designing Interventions

This paper will introduce 'Interventions', a collaborative project that sets out to explore the interconnections between design and social sciences (www.interventions.org.uk). Six researchers from Newcastle University will work alongside six designers with backgrounds in architecture, products, services, interaction and communications. The aim is to foster a creative environment in which participants can use design methodologies to explore specific topics raised within research and develop new ways to express that research to the public. Speaking from a designers point of view, in this paper I illustrate how and why social science has become an integral part of the design process and how it has influenced the way that designers think about and develop their work. I will briefly show how designers are turning creative attention in the pursuit of ethnographic study. I will use examples of work by the 'Interventions' design participants to propose opportunities for new syntheses between design and the social sciences. I will also refer to a collaborative project I undertook with Monica Moreno Figueroa in 2005 and how that fuelled discussions that lead to 'Interventions'. The paper concludes by outlining what might be expected with the Interventions project over the comings weeks and what the outcomes might be.

Download (MP3, 28mb)

Dr. Emiko Saldivar, University of California Santa Barbara

Race in Mexico: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations.

25th June 2010

Racism and race are concepts that are beginning to be used among Mexicans to refer to a certain type of discrimination. Nevertheless, as I was able to observe during my field work among school teachers and officials, the uses of these concepts are not that clear. I will discuss how the absence of a "racial awareness" is part of the state's mestizaje project and, how the lack of a language that acknowledges race contributes to the common believe that racial discrimination is irrelevant. This talk seeks to show and explain, through several examples, the consequences that this "race silence" has had in Mexico.

Co-organised by the Americas Research Group and the Sociology Seminar Series

Download (MP3, 39mb)

Dr Daniel Chernillo, Loughborough University

Eleven theses on the relationships between social theory and natural law

27th October 2010

In this paper, I am interested in exploring the connections between the tradition of natural law and modern social theory. Arguably, the study of the relationships between both traditions has figured only intermittently in the literature and, when the link has been attempted, standard arguments tend to play the two traditions against each other. Natural law is thus seen as the old fashion, highly metaphysical and deeply normative way of thinking that modern social theory has systematically sought to overcome and leave behind. To an extent, it is the very project of modern social theory that seems to coincide with the radical critique of natural law. In contradistinction to such an approach, here I should like to advance an argument about their interrelationships in the format of eleven theses that may help us not only highlight but also reinterpret some of modern social theory’s key features. Without seeking to restore natural law propositions in their own right, I understand this reassessment as a contribution to thinking about modern social theory’s current and future challenges.

Download (MP3, 40mb)

Professor Peter Phillimore, Newcastle University

'That Used to be a Famous Village: Shedding the Past in Rural North India'

24th November 2010

This is an ethnographic reflection on one village’s changing identity, and a consideration of its former reputation.  The place in question is in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. ‘Shedding the past’ is an allusion to a reputation which had dogged this one village for decades – its reputation for jadu, typically translated as ‘witchcraft’ or sometimes as ‘magic’. This has not been a reputation it shared with any other village in the area I ever heard of. The paper is also partly a commentary on a familiar topic, namely the way people talk about social change and its effects on their lives, for the changing reputation I have alluded to only makes sense in relation to a host of other perceived changes. Implicitly I contrast the local visibility of change in certain spheres, with the virtually invisible, unnoticed character of change in others. As will become apparent, the paper is also a kind of personal retrospective, prompted by a return last year to the neighbourhood and village where I did the fieldwork for my PhD over thirty years earlier.

Download (MP3, 52mb)

Dr. Rebecca Ellis, Lancaster University

Life Forms and Forms of Life

26 January 2011

Stories of conversion and promises of salvation are often found close on the heels of apocalyptic fears and have, in the life sciences, tended to shape the co-emergence of life forms with forms of life (Haraway 1997, Helmreich 2006). The Barcoding of Life Initiative (BOLI) is a highly ambitious techno-scientific innovation which aims to geneticize and digitize planetary life in all its cryptic diversity for a global public. In so doing it offers humanity a 'biophilic' re-encounter with nature; an information mediated union which itself promises to slow down further destruction of global biodiversity. In this paper I explore one of the 'artful collaborations' set in motion by BOLI required to fuel the feverish barcoding process with biological material for sequencing. In the mega diverse regions of Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea, communities of local parataxonomists have been enrolled to breed cryptic species of butterfly and prepare specimens for sequencing and analysis by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. I focus specifically upon a number of recent publications on BOLI's work with parataxonomists. The writings conjure up memories of colonialist modes of extractivism and couple these with an explicit spirit of bio-theological conversion. Planetary salvation can be seen to depend, in part, upon the aspirations of barcoding science as bordering on the divine (Stengers, Toulmin) and upon small-scale conversion of 'biodiversity trampling' communities to labouring and 'biophilic' citizens; cryptic species as biological units (life forms) and indigenous conversion (forms of life) are simultaneously naturalised in the process.

Download (MP3)

Professor Gayle Letheryby, University of Plymouth

Hierarchies and Continumms of Non/Motherhood: Some Reflections

09 February 2011

In this paper I reflect on over 20 years of research and writing focusing on aspects of non/motherhood. My work in this area began with my undergraduate dissertation which focused on the experience of miscarriage and was followed by my doctoral research entitled: 'Infertility' and 'Involuntary Childlessness': defintions and self identity. Since completing my doctoral work I have continued to research and talk and write about the complicated issue of non/motherhood. This includes work on the similarities and differences in the experiences of 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' childlessness: the experience of motherhood and nonmotherhood in both the public and private spheres; technology and non/motherhood; teenage pregnancy and young motherhood (and fatherhood) and mother/daughter relationships during pregnancy when the daughter has a pre-existing chronic illness. All of this has led me to consider and critique hierarchies and continuums between those who mother and those who do not. I share some of these reflections in this paper.

Download (MP3)

Dr. Mark Casey, Newcastle University

Democratising Air Travel: the Final Frontier

23 February 2011

This paper presents a small sample of passenger's experiences of low cost air travel (LCAT) and the opinions of principle tourism professionals. The paper draws from research undertaken in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England. The paper initially discusses the limited amount of focus given to social class by those academics concerned with tourism and travel. In particular the paper suggests that a new emphasis is needed on the role and impact of social class on individual's abilities to partake in low cost air travel and the inclusions and exclusions social class can underpin within touristic experiences. Literature on low cost airlines is then addressed, identifying an overemphasis on the financial success stories of LCAT, suggesting a need for a clearer focus on the social and cultural impacts of LCAT. The paper then draws from 12 interviews and 38 questionnaire responses from the travelling public and travel professionals. In so doing the paper suggests that experiences offered of LCAT highlight the role of financial, social and cultural capital in an individual's abilities to partake in the LCAT boom - where the middle class or those already mobile may be those who primarily benefit from the arrival of low cost air travel.

Download (MP3)

Professor Andrew Sayer, Lancaster University

Work, Well-being and Contributive Injustice

02 March 2011

The paper explores the benefits of relating Bourdieu's critical analysis of inequalities and domination to the theory of contributive justice. The latter is a normative theory concerning divisions of labour between jobs of different qualities that provide their holders with unequal possibilities for realizing their potential. Both approaches have Aristotelian influences in their emphasis on the development of dispositions and abilities through practice. It is argued that while this theory needs to consider the shaping of the habitus in early life prior to entry into the labour market, the concept of the unequal division of labour highlights a key structuring force of the social field. In so doing it makes explicit some justifications for Bourdieu's critique of symbolic domination and the struggles of the social field that are left largely implicit in his work.

Download (MP3)

Dr. Steve Taylor, Northumbria University

The Ambiguity of Transnationalism: Eastern Punjabe Migration and Caste

23 March 2011

It is widely accepted that there is a long and continuing history of significant international migration from Punjab, India. The history, dynamics, experience and implications of Punjabi, particularly Sikh, migration to the UK have been well documented. However, there has been, to date, very little analysis of the relationship between international migration, Punjabi transnationalism and the constantly evolving (re)production of Punjabi caste relations. Drawing upon original, transnational, ethnographic research in India and the UK, this is an analysis which this paper seeks to contribute towards. It is argued that contemporary Punjabi transnationalism is helping to shape the dynamism and fluidity of Punjabi caste relations, while also strengthening established Punjabi caste domination and playing a role in the widening of caste inequalities.

Download (MP3)

Benet Reid , Newcastle University

Fear and Calculus: Emotions in a Scientific Discourse

11 May 2011

In the discourse of 'evidence-based healthcare', negotiations are made between understandings of healthcare practice and understandings of scientific knowledge. An explicitly-stated aspect of this discourse concerns attempts to legislate against the influence of emotions on clinical practices. Somewhat ironically, however, the discourse is itself permeated by emotionally-charged styles of reasoning. In this presentation I review some instances of this, and consider the consequences of this type of circularity. Broadening my discussion to consider the operations of science as a cultural institution, I argue for the development of a new empirical strand to sociologies of science, which draws inspiration from recent advances in the sociology of emotion. Disclaimer: there is no calculus in this presentation.

Download (MP3)

Dr. Amina Yaqin, Dr. Daniel McNeil, Dr. Denise Noble

Panel: Gender, Postcoloniality and Critical Race Studies

05 May 2011

Co- organised by the Gender Research Group and the Postcolonial Research Group and supported by Media and Cultural Studies (School of Arts and Cultures), Sociology (School of Geography, Politics and Sociology) and English (School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics).

Dr. Amina Yaqin. SOAS, University of London

Dolls and Modesty: the ideological fashioning of Muslim identities

Download (MP3)

Dr. Daniel McNeil, Newcastle University.

Damaging bourgeois barbarism: Critiquing Hidden & hip hop in the Black public sphere.

Download (MP3)

Dr. Denise Noble, The Ohio State University

Feminizing Freedom and Decolonizing Modernity: The figure of the Independent Black Woman in British-Caribbean Women's Discourses of Freedom

Download (MP3)

Shona Hunter, Leeds University

Power Politics Emotions: Impossible Governance

5 October 2011

Download (MP3)

Liz Turner, Newcastle University

Refusing the Epistemological Bait: is Phronesis the Future for Critical Social Science?

9 November 2011

Liz Turner's paper draws on her experience of working as a Knowledge Transfer Partnership Associate on an ESRC-funded partnership between Newcastle University and Northumbria Local Criminal Justice Board. Inspired by her experience of being involved in the knowledge transfer process, Liz's paper focuses on discussions about the public role of the social sciences under contemporary political, economic and institutional conditions. The paper considers the key characteristics of recent debates about 'public criminology' and 'public sociology', as well as publicly available discourses about impact and the public value of the social sciences, and explores what the notion of social science as phronesis ('contributing to society’s capacity for value-rational deliberation' (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 167)) can bring to these debates.

Download (MP3)

Professor Steve Yearley, Edinburgh University

Game Theory with Real Game: Science Studies and the Collaborative Management of Wild Deer in Britain

29th February 2012

Download (MP3)

Professor Gill Crozier, Roehampton University

Border Crossings and Cultural Fusions: working class students constructing hybrid identities in higher education

14th March 2012

Download (MP3)