Events
Open Forum on Feminist Definitions of Basic Income, April 25
Open forum on feminist definitions of basic income co-organised by FRIBIS UBI and Gender team (FRIBIS-UBIG) and by BIEN working group for Clarification of BI definition (BIEN-CBID) 7.30am Eastern Daylight Time (North America) / 12.30pm British Summer Time / 1.30pm Central European Summer Time / 8.30pm Japan Standard Time / 11.30pm New Zealand Standard Time […]
Open Forum on Feminist Definitions of Basic Income, April 25
Forum: The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future
In April, the School of Social and Political Sciences, in collaboration with the Justice and Inequality research priority of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, will be hosting Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has a longstanding interest in the social and historical sources of inequality, within and across nations. From 2015 to 2020 Mike was Director of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, and his most recent book is The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press, 2021), praised by Thomas Piketty as a “major sociological contribution to the ongoing global debate on inequality and the return of social class”.
During Mike’s visit, we will be holding two public events: a public lecture on ‘The Racial Wealth Divide’ and a forum on ‘The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future’ (details below). In addition, we will be holding two closed workshops: one on the hold of finance on public policy (and how to loosen or break it) (April 4-5) and another on the methodological and theoretical challenges facing inequality researchers at a time of escalating inequality (April 16). These events are invitation-only, but spaces are available – please contact martijn.konings@sydney.edu.au for further information.
Forum: The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future
Wednesday 3 April, 3:30-5 pm
A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 650, The University of Sydney
Over the past decade, a certain strain of intellectual pessimism has migrated from social theory to popular culture. Our ability to make better futures, it advises, is hamstrung by the sheer weight of the past, resulting in economic stagnation, escalating inequality, generational rifts, and political instability. In political economy, that weight of the past has often been identified with the figure of the rentier, and Piketty’s work has documented the return of this morally questionable character, living off the return on property. But today’s rentiers are no longer top-hatted financiers, and whether owning a second home represents moral turpitude or a middle-class survival strategy is actively debated in the op-ed pages of Australian newspapers. Nor is it clear that we can account for the full extent of inequity in contemporary society by continuing to rely on existing definitions of wealth. As suggested by the current popularity of concepts such as “technofeudalism”, the production of speculative claims on imagined futures shape what appear to be anachronistically exploitative forms of work.
The disorienting ways in which old and new combine to produce unfamiliar forms of inequality demands that we open up our concepts and reconsider our methods. One of the most ambitious and compelling attempts to do so has been advanced by Mike Savage in his recent book The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press, 2021). Professor Savage will be visiting the University of Sydney in April, and, taking its cue from the subtitle of his book, this panel invites leading scholars to reflect on how the past weighs on our future-making, and how we can acknowledge this without falling prey to pessimism of either will or intellect. Four panellists – Janet Roitman (RMIT), Mareike Beck (Warwick), Amin Samman (City), and Gareth Bryant (Sydney) – will provide punchy takes on the problem, and Mike will conclude with his own reflections on the post-pandemic future of the past.
Immediately after the event is Sophie Webber and Gareth Bryant’s book launch for Climate Finance at Gleebooks (from 6pm)
The post Forum: The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Mike Savage Public Lecture: ‘The Racial Wealth Divide’
In April, the School of Social and Political Sciences, in collaboration with the Justice and Inequality research priority of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, will be hosting Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has a longstanding interest in the social and historical sources of inequality, within and across nations. From 2015 to 2020 Mike was Director of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, and his most recent book is The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press, 2021), praised by Thomas Piketty as a “major sociological contribution to the ongoing global debate on inequality and the return of social class”.
During Mike’s visit, we will be holding two public events: a forum on ‘The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future’ and a public lecture on ‘The Racial Wealth Divide’ (details below). In addition, we will be holding two closed workshops: one on the hold of finance on public policy (and how to loosen or break it) (April 4-5) and another on the methodological and theoretical challenges facing inequality researchers at a time of escalating inequality (April 16). These events are invitation-only, but spaces are available – please contact martijn.konings@sydney.edu.au for further information.
Public lecture: The Racial Wealth Divide
10 April, 5:30-7 pmLecture Theatre 208, Veterinary Science Conference Centre, The University of SydneyPlease register to attendOver the past decade, escalating wealth inequalities have become apparent across the globe. It is increasingly evident that this is driven not by anonymous forces like “globalization” or “capital”, but by elites who enjoy disproportionate power and influence. This lecture addresses the intellectual and political challenges posed by this trend. Most fundamentally, how should we define, measure, and track this wealth, given that its growth stems at least in part from elites’ ability to stay under public, scholarly, and regulatory radars? How does wealth inequality reinforce racial, gender and other divides, and how does it shape social mobility and life chances across numerous domains? And what strategies could effectively advance the growing public interest in taxing wealth as a means to address entrenched wealth inequalities? This lecture discusses how wealth accumulation is underwritten by legal devices such as the ‘non-domicile’ tax regime; shows the roots of this in British imperial history, and considers the prospects for tax justice.
The post Mike Savage Public Lecture: ‘The Racial Wealth Divide’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
BIEN 2024 Congress: Call for Papers
“BIEN 2024 is focused on basic income’s potential as a tool for social transformation towards an economically just, politically inclusive and ecologically sustainable world. The Congress theme is thus about constructing a transformative vision of society – built on the principles of universal sufficiency, social and distributive justice, inclusion, care, and ecological sustainability – and […]
CFP IAG 2024: Energy Geography and Renewable Energy
We are inviting abstracts for the IAG 2024 in Adelaide for our session on Energy Geography and Renewable Energy.
Energy Geography and Renewable Energy
Organised by: Gareth Bryant (USyd) gareth.bryant@sydney.edu.au, James Goodman (UTS) James.Goodman@UTS.edu.au, Lisa Lumsden (Next Economy) l.lumsden@nexteconomy.com.au, Sophie Webber (USyd) sophie.webber@sydney.edu.au
Sponsored by the Economic Geography Study Group and the Nature, Risk and Resilience Study Group
Transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy are multilevel and transformative. Energy is rescaled, from distributed and household contexts to new greenfield or ‘brownfield’ wind, solar and storage utilities, regional renewable development modelling, national planning frameworks and global energy and climate policy-making. There is extensive scale shifting by renewable energy corporates and financial institutions as well as by critical climate NGOs and activist networks, that often leverage variations in regulatory regimes or in commitments to decarbonisation. Drivers of transition can be complementary, as ‘co-benefits’, but they can also collide. Much of the renewable sector is privately owned, albeit dependent on state authority, and the priority of maintaining investor returns can take precedence over emissions reduction. Efforts at maximising returns in neoliberal renewables can exacerbate social divisions, negate community or livelihood benefit and prevent wider democratic participation, involvement or social ownership. All these aspects pose problems for renewable energy legitimacy, driving new contestations and new forms of claim-making, including for social ownership and for socio-ecological priorities to take precedence over corporate interests. We seek papers that address how people interpret these and related transitions, how lives are re-ordered and how the meaning and potential of places is thereby transformed. We are especially interested in how the new socio-ecological geographies of energy can be generative, producing new capacity for climate agency and decarbonisation.
Interested presenters should send (no more than) 250-word abstracts, with title, keywords, authors and contact information to the session organisers by Friday March 22. We will notify accepted papers before the IAG deadline.
Cover image: Illustration by Matt Rota for The Transnational Institute
The post CFP IAG 2024: Energy Geography and Renewable Energy appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Book Launch: Climate Finance
Please join us for the Sydney book launch of Climate Finance: Taking a Position on Climate Futures (Agenda Publishing).
Co-authors Gareth Bryant and Sophie Webber (University of Sydney) will be joined by Adrienne Buller (author of The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism) and Jenny Leong (Greens MP for Newtown) to launch the book.
Where: Gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe (now fully accessible)
When: Wednesday 3rd April 2024, 6pm for 6.30 start
RSVP: https://www.gleebooks.com.au/event/gareth-bryant-sophie-webber-climate-finance/
The post Book Launch: Climate Finance appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Open Doors Philosophy Academy
The Open Doors Philosophy Academy is a philosophy summer program for undergraduates that is “designed to give individuals from groups traditionally underrepresented in academic philosophy a taste of graduate student life as well as various forms of support useful in applying to and flourishing in Ph.D. programs in Philosophy.”
[René Magritte, “The Improvement”]
Taking place at the University of Pittsburgh, the program will include seminars taught by Pittsburgh faculty and graduates of the Pitt PhD program who now teach elsewhere.
You can learn more about the Open Doors Philosophy Academy here (via Jennifer Whiting).
It’s one of several philosophy programs being offered at various institutions this summer. You can check out others at the following links:
- Summer 2024 Philosophy Programs for Undergraduates
- Summer 2024 Philosophy Programs for Graduate Students/PhDs
- Summer 2024 Philosophy Programs for High School Students
If you’re involved in a summer program not listed at the above links, feel free to add it in the comments to the relevant post.
The post Open Doors Philosophy Academy first appeared on Daily Nous.
Metaphilosophy Project Workshop Series
A project on metaphilosophy led by Boran Berčić (University of Rijeka) has won a sizable grant from the Croatian Science Foundation and is putting on a series of online workshops.
The project aims to take up various questions related to the nature of philosophy and philosophical methodology.
The fourth workshop is taking place this Thursday, featuring a talk by one of the project’s members, Mark Balaguer (Cal State LA). The workshops are now open to any philosophers who may be interested. If you’re interested in attending, send a request to for the workshop’s Zoom link to matija.rajter@gmail.com.
You can learn more about the project here.
Disclosure: I am a member of the team working on this project.
The post Metaphilosophy Project Workshop Series first appeared on Daily Nous.
Convocatoria abierta: 1er Congreso Latinoamericano de Renta Básica Universal Incondicional
Entre los días 17 y 19 de julio, en San José de Costa Rica, se llevará a cabo el primer Congreso Latinoamericano de Renta Básica Universal Incondicional. Se recibirán ponencias hasta el 12 de abril. El formato será híbrido, con modalidad presencial y también online. Este primer encuentro regional es un hito en el avance […]
Convocatoria abierta: 1er Congreso Latinoamericano de Renta Básica Universal Incondicional
Sylvester McCoy Plays The Spoons On Colin Baker And Bonnie Langford
Sylvester McCoy plays the Spoons on Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford during the Doctor Who panel for London Comic Con (Spring).