Tuesday 24th May 2022, 13:00 – 14:00 BST
Presenter: David Byrne, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Applied Social Science, University of Durham
Webinar Overview:
Widely acknowledged as the key driver of political discontent and social instability, economic inequality across high and middle-income countries is profoundly interconnected with climate change. Both of these issues are now set within the particularly acute context of COVID-19 and its aftermath. Confronting the crisis of these inherently interwoven issues is now the major problem for all political and governance systems. This Webinar will draw on the complex realist frame of reference to understand the character of social-cultural-economic-political-ecological systems AND to consider the role of applied social and ecological science combined in an inter or even post disciplinary fashion in informing policy and practice for what must be done. I will reflect on the role of scientists and practitioners, particularly people in roles like those of the analytical professions of the UK Civil Service, who can in Gramsci’s terms be thought of as “Organic Intellectuals”, in acting towards necessary system transformation.
Presenter Biography:
David Byrne is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Applied Social Science at the University of Durham. His research and teaching interests straddle social inequality and the methodological programme of the Social Sciences. He is a firm adherent of interdisciplinary approaches – even of post-disciplinary work. Since the 1990s he has been engaged with the Complexity Frame of Reference as a basis for thinking about, researching AND acting within and on complex social systems. He has a special interest in the role of case based methods for exploring complex causation. He is author of Coping with inequality in a context of climate crisis and after COVID (2021) London: Routledge; Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: the state of the art (with Gill Callaghan) London: Routledge 2014; and other books on methodology and on complexity and the social sciences.
How to Join:
This talk will take place via a Zoom Webinar (registration now closed).
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. In case you are unable to attend, a recording of the webinar will be uploaded to our website following the event.
Link to Webinar Recording:
If you were unable to join the webinar, you can watch the session via our YouTube channel below. We are also pleased to be able to share a PDF version of the PowerPoint slides, please click here to view.