Programme full

Stream Plenaries and Special Sessions
WEDNESDAY 15 APRIL 2015 17:45-18:45
The plenary comprises of seven papers that will each address this challenge as part of a broader project of
questioning the category of crisis itself and the ostensibly ‘economic’ nature of the crisis and its manifestations. By
considering the apparent limitations of sociology, the contributors will explore how sociology, being neither above nor
outside the crisis, articulates a mode of thinking the ‘economy’ that is itself an expression of the crisis. The session will
thus consider the possibilities for a sociology of the crisis that internalises this contradiction and thereby produce
knowledge that better appreciates its own limits and barriers by moving away from sociological criticism towards a
critique of society and its fetishized separation from the economy.
Turn Sociology against Itself. Turn the University Upside Down.
Holloway, J.
(BUA Puebla, Mexico)
In this paper, John Holloway reflects on the present limitations of sociology. He argues that we should 'turn sociology
against itself' and 'turn the university upside down'. Holloway argues that we must consider the possibility of
transcending the barriers that separate ‘us’ – the social scientists from ‘them’ – the subjects of study. It is possible to
(re)constitute a ‘we’ by rethinking objectivity and subjectivity in such a way that creates a form of sociological critique
that is integrated into global struggles for a dignified social existence and the possibility for a different world.
Towards an Alliance of Sociology, Political Economy and Heterodox Economics: Social Scientists of the
Word Unite!
Brown, A.
(University of Leeds)
Academic, student, public and media discontent with the mainstream economics profession has had little impact on
the profession itself, some eight years after the onset of the crisis that it was widely criticised for failing to anticipate or
explain. The economics profession continues to promulgate a version of economic theory that appears as an
individualistic ideology incapable of proper recognition of social structure and social agency. Governments continue to
heed the advice of this profession. Widespread austerity has benefited finance capital and the social elite whilst
affecting those in society most in need of help. It is time for sociologists, political economists and heterodox
economists to unite in order to build a strategic opposition, and an alternative, to the individualism of mainstream
economics. Such an alliance can demonstrate and assert the power of the sociological imagination, in conjunction
with other social sciences and heterodox economists, to explain the crisis, its aftermath and to offer an integrated
vision of an alternative socioeconomic future.
A Dialogue of Critical Solidarity: Public Sociology and Social Movements’ Knowledge Production
in Conversation
Cox, L.
(National University of Ireland, Maynooth)
Sociology, it might be thought, should have interrelationships between the different aspects of the current crisis –
economic, political, ecological, international, cultural – and in analysing how social crises develop and their possible
outcomes. Yet with few exceptions, the public intellectuals whose voices are heard outside of academia are not
sociologists. This short talk suggests that this intellectual marginality stems partly from naivete about the sociology of
our own knowledge and our interlocutors’ interests in particular. Historically, sociology has repeatedly reestablished
its social relevance through dialogue with movements for social change; this talk calls for a dialogue of
critical solidarity between public sociology and new forms of knowledge production in social movements. The
article discusses these new forms in greater depth.
Anti-social Finance: Harnessing the Social
Harvie, D., Dowling, E.
(University of Leicester)
In a political-economic environment of intersecting crises – financial, economic, fiscal, social reproduction, political
legitimacy – policy actors in the UK and globally are promoting so-called social finance as a solution to various
social problems. Developing out of the ‘social investment’ perspective (associated with ‘third way’ thinkers such as
Anthony Giddens), new social finance champions social investment markets that promote the harnessing of
private wealth to finance social services once provided by the state. Beyond financial innovation, such a
model facilitates social innovation that encourages more ‘efficient’ social services via ‘competitive’ rates of return for
social investors, whether ‘venture philanthropists’ or more conventional financial institutions, who would ‘do well by
BSA Annual Conference 2015 32
Glasgow Caledonian University