Market Square - The Polity, Economy and Society Cambridge Research Group
Alternate Wednesdays, 12.15-14.15 during term time
CRASSH, Seminar room SG2, Ground floor
Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT
Programme 2011-12
For further information click the individual event title.
Easter term 2012
This term’s theme is Politics of welfare states in contexts. The first reading group will discuss Jane Gingrich’s Making Markets in the Welfare State (which focuses on the political consequences of various different institutional welfare regimes). We will be discussing this text in the context of the current crisis of the European welfare state (as described in articles in the New Left Review). Extending this theme of the political consequences of the pressure placed on welfare states by the current crisis this term´s invited speaker will be Dr Mica Panic of Selwyn College who will deliver a lecture entitled The Great Systemic Crisis: Economic Security, Social Welfare and Peace. The final reading group of terms brings these empirical themes together theoretically, discussing Gunnar Myrdal´s classic work Beyond the Welfare State, which looks at the inherent tensions between democracy and dependency, nationalism and internationalism, within the context of welfare state politics.
Introduced by Jeff Miley (Dept of Sociology, Cambridge)
Mica Panic (Selwyn College, Cambridge)
Gavin Kitching (School of Politics and International Relations, University of New South Wales).
NB The group will meet at 2.30pm today
Introduced by Tiago Mata (Dept History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge)
Lent Term 2012
This term’s invited speaker is Professor Richard Drayton (King’s College London), who will deliver a lecture on ‘Money, Debt, and the American empire, c. 1971-2012.' In reading groups we shall start from John Hobson’s classic study of the economic and political motivations of imperialism. We shall then discuss Philip Bobbitt’s thesis that the nation-state is shifting towards a new form, the market-state. Finally, Giovanni Arrighi’s analysis of the economic and political rise of China will provide a case study in which we shall put at work the analytical categories developed so far.
Professor Richard Drayton (King’s College London)
Reading group.
NB: The group will meet in a different room today* (2nd Floor, room 204, CLAS)
Michaelmas Term 2011
In reading groups we shall start from Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, and then introduce an emphasis on political conflict by reading Antonio Gramsci's The Modern Prince. We shall then put at work the analytical tensions emerging from those readings by discussing Mark Blyth's studies of the embedding and disembedding of markets in Great Transformations
Dr Craig Muldrew (Fac of History, Queen's College, Cambridge)
Reading group
