Craig Calhoun, The New Director of the
London School of Economics from September, President of the Social Science Research Council since 1999 and University Professor of Social Sciences at NYU.
Craig has written and published widely in Sociology and his books have been
translated into more than a dozen languages.
Craig will be speaking on Human Suffering and Humanitarian
Response.
Kate Nash, Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University. Kate has written and published widely on political sociology.
Kate will be speaking on Suffering, Humanitarianism and Giving.
Larry Ray, Professor of Sociology at University of Kent. For over 20 years he has researched the crisis and transformation of post-communist societies and its implications for social theory.
Larry will be speaking on Violence and Suffering.
Gillian Bendelow, Professor of Sociology at University of Sussex. Gillian has a strong research background in Medical Sociology and a previous committee member for the BSA MedSoc Group.
Gillian will be speaking on The Caring Response to Suffering.
Iain Wilkinson is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at University of Kent. Iain interest is modern attitudes towards human suffering.
Iain will be opening the Presidential Event with Professor John Brewer, President of the BSA.
To read more about the speakers and their publications, click http://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/Presidentialplenary.htm
The
magnitude and force of critical events of human suffering mark out modern times
as an unparalleled ‘age of extremes’.
The scale of military conflict, the vast numbers of people trapped in
systems of totalitarian oppression, the accumulation of conditions of mass humanitarian disaster and the entrenched poverty of the new ‘mega-slums’ leave
many of us shocked and appalled by the harms we inflict on one another.
It
is also now widely understood that we have created social conditions in which
the maintenance of an affluent lifestyle and pursuit of consumer aspiration at
one end of the globe are structurally implicated in the intensification of forces of violent oppression at the other. In this respect, the problem of suffering has changed not only in relation to the catastrophes that break apart
societies, but also in accordance with the extent to which these are understood
to be generated by social practices that at their point of origin may seem quite
harmless and benign.
The
brute fact of human suffering is frequently taken as a prompt for us to question
the social, political and cultural circumstances in which we are made to live.
It makes sociologists of us all. In almost every instance, the most significant
developments in sociology have been inspired under the attempt to better
understand the conditions that give rise to human misery; and further, how these
can be re-fashioned for the project of building humane forms of society.
This
BSA Presidential event is dedicated to the ongoing attempt to devise a
sociological account of causes and consequences of human suffering. It also aims
to cultivate a broad-ranging debate over the role of humanitarianism within our
culture and the vocation of sociology
itself.