Surveillance ambiguities and the practice of care
Seminar
The implicit ambiguity of surveillance as both control and care has been a key theoretical issue in social science research on surveillance practices and technologies since the foundational work of Michel Foucault. This issue also reflects a prevalent socio-technical perspective in which a central…
Networked crises? Banning, limiting or embracing smartphones in Australian Schools
Lecture
This Social Sciences Week event is presented by the Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS) and the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. This public panel features three social scientists who research the intersections of young people, digitalisation, data, surveillance,…
Book launch: Social Beings, Future Belongings
Book launch
Social Beings, Future Belongings is a collection of sociological essays that address an increasingly relevant matter: what does belonging look like in the twenty-first century? The book critically explores the concept of belonging and how it can respond to contemporary problems in not only the…
The Accord and its antinomies: from consensus to anti-politics?
Seminar
The Prices and Incomes Accord between the ALP and the ACTU was central to economic restructuring in the Hawke-Keating era, and is generally assumed to have been consensual and in the national interest. Yet, this was also the period vanguard neoliberalism in Australia — a project usually associated…
Henryk Grossman on Australia: insights and errors in historical sociology
Seminar
In his principal work, published in 1929, Henryk Grossman identified both the fundamental mechanism involved in capitalism’s tendency to break down, at the heart of capital accumulation, and the weaknesses in other Marxist explanations of economic crises. He used evidence from Australia, amongst…
Ethos and Eidos: For a Social Theory of Morality and Ethics
Seminar
The presumptive purpose of applied philosophical ethics, and those who work within it, is to provide definitive guides, if not necessarily decisive answers, to substantive ethical debates. This goal is pursued through robust conceptual analysis and the construction of rigorous arguments for and…
Role-Taking in Everyday Life: Graduate Fellows Panel
Panel discussion
The Role-Taking Project (RTP) is an ongoing initiative for the systematic study of role-taking, or symbolically placing the self in another’s position. Supported by an ANU Futures Scheme grant and led by Dr. Jenny Davis (ANU Sociology) and Dr. Tony Love (University of Kentucky Sociology), a core…