Birkbeck Institute for Social Research
Diagnosing the Contemporary – Seminar Series
Wednesday 10th March 3.30
Room 254 Birkbeck Main Building
John Clarke (OU) – Crises and Conjunctures: looking for the here and now
The recent economic crisis has brought the questions and problems of analysing conjunctures back into focus. In this seminar, I want to return to the model of conjunctural analysis mapped out in Policing the Crisis (Hall et al., 1978) and explore three problems of trying to develop a conjunctural analysis of the present:
1. The spatial composition of the conjuncture: where is the ‘here’ of the here and now?
2. The temporal composition of the conjuncture: when is the ‘now’ of the here and now?
3. Who are the social groups animated in the conjuncture and how do they become (or not) political forces?
John Clarke is Professor of Social Policy at the Open University, where he has worked for more than 25 years on the political and cultural struggles involved in remaking welfare states. He has a particular interest in the ways in which managerialism and consumerism have re-shaped the relations between welfare, states and nations. He is currently working with an international group on a project called Disputing Citizenship. His books include Changing Welfare, Changing States (Sage, 2004); Creating Citizen-Consumers (with Janet Newman and others, Sage, 2007) and Publics, Politics and Power: remaking the public in public services (with Janet Newman, Sage 2009).
This event has been recorded and is available as a podcast at the following URL:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2010/03/john-clarke-crises-and-conjunctures-looking-for-the-here-and-now/
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