Sociology talks (several choices on offer)

Sessions include:

The Study of Cinema
The study of cinema exhibition offers us a fascinating insight into the unique relationship between the moving image and its audiences. This illustrated talk, suitable for students working in a wide range of subjects - including Film and Media, English, History and Sociology - will investigate the way in which our experience of cinema has developed from the very intimate and personal ‘peephole viewing’ of Edison’s kinetoscope to the truly social, immersive experiences we recognise today. We’ll take in the lavish 1,000+ seater auditorium or ‘dream palace’, the ‘drive-in’ popular with American youths, the bespoke movie theatre and the multiplex. And we’ll consider whether the increasingly popular ‘pop up’ cinema, site-specific screenings and the ‘open cinema’ movement (aimed at extending exhibition to excluded communities) is the future of independent cinema exhibition in the UK.

Living with Uncertainty - Risks in a Super Connected World
In many respects, the world of the early twenty-first century is markedly safer than that our ancestors experienced a century ago. Whether in terms of war, industrial accidents or even diseases, however, globally, we are better off than we were a century ago, an experience most evident in advanced economies. Yet, today, we face risks which, though not new, now have the potential to be world problems, and for threats and problems to spread across borders faster and more easily than anything earlier generations could have anticipated. What is the nature of the new risks we face today? How should societies today, from citizens to policymakers, respond? The spread of the coronavirus is an example of the uncertainty with which we will have to live. It will not be the last such challenge we will face globally.

Global Pandemics and Global Food Systems
Much in our worlds has changed since the outbreak and spread of covid-19, but a fundamental way in which this was picked up in everyday life was the availability of certain foodstuffs, or rather the lack of them. This session examines our common sense understandings of the relationship between food and the covid-19 pandemic. It looks at three key areas: how public health threats affect the ways in which we produce and consume food; the vulnerability of our main food suppliers to sudden disruptions; and, finally, where responsibility might lie for ensuring domestic food security.

Following 'social norms' and 'social habits' or making free choices?
The individual actions you did this morning getting to school (think about what how you got up, what you did immediately after, what you chose to wear, eat, how you got here, and why you came here in the first place etc). Then discuss the extent to which you think these actions were (a) shaped by learned ‘social norms’ and ‘social values’ (i.e. behaviour we do because most other people in our society or culture do them), or were (b) our genuine free choices that we as individuals were able to make, free from these ‘social norms’ and ‘social values’?

I Consume, Therefore I am? Consumer Culture and Identity
How much of your life is defined by what you buy and your identity as a consumer? This session is about how consumption has replaced production as the main way that our society identities its members and shapes their conduct. Providing an overview of theories of consumption from the beginning of modernity to today, it considers how consumption has become pervasive in how we understand our selves and lifestyles, our relationships with institutions, our work-life-balance, and our intimate lives.

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