FW: Invitation: Claus Offe Seminar-May 14-Colloquium on Social Change
Philip Vergragt
Please excuse cross postings.
Please see the invitation below. Claus Offe is an important progressive thinker from Germany. This is a unique opportunity to meet him in person.
Advance registration is necessary.
Philip
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Dear Colleague,
You are invited to the May 14th lunch seminar with Prof. Claus Offe, Professor of Political Science, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin. This seminar is part of Colloquium on Consumption and Social Change, an ongoing gathering of academics and policy professionals.
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Location and Time: Noon–1:30 on Wednesday, May 14, Tellus Institute, 11 Arlington Street, Boston, MA. The preparatory reading for the seminar is attached.
Registration: Advance registration is required. To register, please send a note to Robert Ward at rw...@tellus.org, if possible before May 12.
ABSTRACT
Consumers into citizens. Social innovations for empowering households
Much of the debate over the future of consumerist society starts with the following asymmetry: While investors have at their disposal strategies of technical and organizational change to increase "efficiency", i. e. the amount of output they get per unit of capital input, private households do not have analogous means to increase the volume of utility they get out of a given unit of household income. Under the pressure of increasing levels of poverty and inequality, consumer households have developed a number of strategies, both organizational and technical, to overcome this discrepancy - with the result of significant social changes both in quantitative terms ("efficiency of consumption") and qualitative terms ("critical consumption"). This presentation will offer a classification of consumer initiatives of this kind as well as strategies of both capital and the state to hinder and obstruct their implementation.
Goal of the Colloquium: To build a knowledge base for greater understanding of how a transition beyond our contemporary consumerism-based culture and economy might take place.
Approach: The Colloquium examines and synthesizes theories and empirical experiences of social change from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. The aim of the seminars is to bring together scholars and practitioners concerned with social change into sustained and free-flowing interaction.
Colloquium Speakers (Additional speakers will be added in coming months)
April 16: David Snow, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California–Irvine, will speak on framing and identity formation in social movements, in relation to social change efforts.
May 14: Claus Offe, Professor of Political Science Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany, will talk about recent changes in consumption patterns, owing to decreasing household wealth, and the responses to these changes by the state and capital.
May 28: Douglas Holt, President of Cultural Strategy Group will provide a critique of the two dominant framings -- sustainable consumption and new economy -- and proposes new strategies based upon constructing sustainable markets and targeting citizens most alienated by the business-as-usual economy.
October 15: Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, author of “Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth”, will speak about her research and theory of the new economics.
January 14, 2015: Erik Olin Wright, Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison will speak about proposals and models of radical social change, drawing on his Real Utopias Project.
February 11, 2015: George Ritzer, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, author of “The McDonaldization of Society”, will speak on his theory of prosumption and “prosumer capitalism”
Other speakers (dates to be confirmed):
William Leach, Professor of American History at Columbia University, will discuss American cultural history in the late nineteenth century, with a focus on the emergence of the modern consumerism and social changes.
Dorothy Holland, Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor at UNC at Chapel Hill, coauthor of “Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds” and “History in Person: Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities”, will speak about social movements and local democracy and activism.
Halina S. Brown
Professor of Environmental Science and Policy
Department of International Development, Community and Environment
Clark University
950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610
Associate Fellow
Tellus Institute
11 Arlington Street, Boston MA 02116
Executive Board Member
Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative, SCORAI
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Philip J. Vergragt Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Technology Assessment
Research Professor, George Perkins Marsh Institute, Clark University Worcester MA USA
Fellow, Tellus Institute, 11 Arlington Street, Boston MA 02116-3411 USA
Tel +1-617-266-5400/ Fax 8303; email pver...@tellus.org ; www.tellus.org
Subject Editor, Journal of Cleaner Production http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-cleaner-production
Member of SCORAI Exec. Committee www.scorai.org (Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative)
Coordinator of Global Research Forum on Sustainable Production and Consumption GRF-SPaC http://grf-spc.weebly.com/
Co-Chair of GRF-SPaC Fudan 2014 Conference, https://www.confmanager.com/main.cfm?cid=2724&nid=16317
Peter Cutting
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Worcester Housing, Energy and Community
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