The Sociology subject area at the University of Glasgow are pleased to announce that this year Professor Nancy Fraser will be giving our annual Frisby Memorial Lecture.

Speaker: Professor Nancy Fraser (University of Cambridge and New School for Social Research) on “Behind Marx’s ‘Hidden Abode’: Toward and Expanded Conception of Capitalism”

Wednesday 12 February 2014, 16:30-18:30

Established in 2012 in recognition of our colleague Professor David Frisby, the lecture is an opportunity to hear from an internationally renowned sociologist.  Thus far we have had Professors Richard Sennett and Erik Olin Wright giving the lectures and we are delighted to welcome Professor Fraser this year. Professor Fraser is currently Diane Middlebrook/Carl Djerassi Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge and Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research.  She is well known for her work on justice and inequality as well as Marxist and Feminist theory.  Her many publications include The Radical Imagination: Between Redistribution and Recognition (2003), Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (2007) and Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (2013).

Abstract

The current sense of crisis – in economy, ecology, politics, and society – is prompting many critical theorists to revisit the problem of capitalism. I salute this return to core issues of social theory after a period of neglect. But received understandings of capitalism are not adequate to 21st century conditions.

I propose, accordingly, to re-examine a basic theoretical question: How is capitalism best conceptualized – as an economic system, a form of ethical life, or an institutionalized social order? To answer this question, I will integrate some relatively familiar concepts from Marx with newer insights from feminist, ecological, and political theorizing.

Whereas Marx sought the essence of capitalism by looking beneath the sphere of exchange to the “hidden abode” of production, I shall look behind production to abodes that are more hidden still. The result will be an expanded conception of capitalism able better to accommodate the multiplicity of crisis tendencies and social struggles that characterize the 21st century.

This is a public event and we would welcome all to attend. 

Photo credit:  © jurjen_nl/