A one-day international conference is being organised by the Max Weber Study Group and the Theory Study Group of the British Sociological Association. Its purpose is to think about the current state and prospects of both the university and the social sciences and humanities. After years of having allowed themselves to be defined in terms of usefulness to the ‘economy’, social scientists and academics in general have to face up to the harsh reality and consider whether
they have not simply surrendered their mission and responsibility.
With the total withdrawal of state funding for teaching of the Arts,
Humanities and Social Sciences, debt-burdened students will be
entering effectively privatised universities at a time when market
recipes are demonstrably failing in all spheres of life. In addition,
research funds will be severely cut and their allocation further
subjected to indicators alien to serious scholarship. These are only
the most extreme forms so far of developments taking place elsewhere,
such as the EU’s ‘Bologna process’. This conference seeks to explain
how we have arrived here, to analyse the consequences of these
developments and the possibilities for a free social science praxis
(both in teaching and scholarship), and to set out the choices that
may lie ahead and the responsibilities attached to them.
The conference organisers invite the submission of one page abstracts
addressing one or more of the above topics and questions. The
conference will take place on 27th May 2011 at the Birmingham Midland
Institute.
Posted on February 11, 2011 by elisseiatesen
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