*** Update: Due to the current COVID-19 Situation in the ACT and resultant lockdown, this event will now be held online only via Zoom.


Join Professors Gurminder Bhambra and John Holmwood for a book event for 'Colonialism & Modern Social Theory'.

This event is a special seminar with Gurminder Bhambra and John Holmwood to discuss their new book Colonialism and Modern Social Theory, out with Polity in August 2021.

The event will begin at 6pm Tuesday 5 October, 2021. Refreshments will be available in the RSSS Building foyer at 5.30pm.


About the book
In Colonialism & Modern Social Theory, Gurminder K. Bhambra and John Holmwood examine the role of colonialism in the development of modern society and the legacies it has bequeathed. Beginning with a consideration of the role of colonialism and empire in the formation of social theory from Hobbes to Hegel, the authors go on to focus on the work of Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Du Bois. As well as unpicking critical omissions and misrepresentations, the chapters discuss the places where colonialism is acknowledged and discussed – albeit inadequately – by these founding figures; and we come to see what this fresh rereading has to offer and why it matters. This inspiring and insightful book argues for a reconstruction of social theory that should lead to a better understanding of contemporary social thought, its limitations, and its wider possibilities.


About the authors
Gurminder K Bhambra is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex, a Trustee at the Sociological Review Foundation, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is co-editor of Discover Society, an online social research magazine, and editor of Global Social Theory. She is author of the prize-winning Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination and Connected Sociologies. She is also co-editor of Decolonising the University and the Project Director of the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project.

John Holmwood is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham. He was expert witness for the defence in misconduct cases brought against senior teachers falsely accused of a plot to Islamicise schools in Birmingham. Together with Therese O'Toole, he is author of Countering Extremism in Birmingham Schools? The Truth about the Birmingham Trojan Horse Affair (Policy Press, 2018).


Event Details
5:30pm - 7:00pm Tuesday 5 October, 2021
Venue: Auditorium, RSSS Building
Chair: Mary Lou Rasmussen

Zoom
Meeting ID: 878 0741 3011
Password: 0000

Photo by John Suler on Flickr.