John Western Memorial Lecture

Event Details

Date:

Wednesday, 28 September 2011

Time:

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Room:

Auditorium (Level 2)

UQ Location:

Sir Llew Edwards Building (St Lucia)

Event category(s):

Full Description:: You are invited to a special evening in honour of former UQ Professor of Sociology John Western AM. Professor John Braithwaite from the Australian National University will present the inaugural lecture Western Realism and Romanticism.

The error of realism as a theory of international relations is analysed by pondering the "romantic" though partial rise of democracy in places like the Philippines (the "people power" revolution of 1986), Eastern Europe 1989, Tunisia and Egypt 2011, and the realism of how Australia responded to the invasion of East Timor after 1975.

Reasons and remedies why a networked democracy movement might develop into a governance of tyranny are then considered. The lecture moves on to address realist managerialism versus a politics of hope for the future of the social sciences including sociology and for Australian universities more broadly. It concludes with some consideration of John Western as both realist and romantic, and certainly as a scholar whose legacy is a politics of hope for the future of Australian academic work.

Professor Braithwaite is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and Founder of RegNet (the Regulatory Institutions Network) at the Australian National University.