Symposium in Honour of Peter Dickens, Brighton, 3 Jul 2013

Changing our Environment, Changing Ourselves:
A Festschrift Symposium in Honour of Peter Dickens
Checkland E513, Falmer Campus, University of Brighton
Wednesday 3rd July, 10am-5pm.

In an academic career spanning five decades, Peter Dickens has established a reputation as an
exceptionally accessible and passionate writer whose work nonetheless retains remarkable intellectual breadth and depth. His major books include: Housing, States and Localities (1985), One Nation? (1988), Urban Sociology (1990), Property, Bureaucracy and Culture (1992), Society and Nature (1992 & 2004), Reconstructing Nature (1996), Social Darwinism (2000), and Cosmic Society (2007). These wide-ranging texts have in common a central concern with the relationship captured in the title of this symposium (also the subtitle of his award-winning book Society and Nature). This is the way in which human subjectivity, health and psychological well-being are changed as we work on our environment, and how these changes in turn affect how we understand and interact with the environments we shape. These relationships of course depend on the social structures within which they take place. Dickens’ focus has continually shifted to grapple with contemporary social issues as they have appeared on the horizon, from the privatisation of public housing, to genetic engineering, to the commodification of space resources. His path through these issues has been guided by a critical realist philosophy, Red-Green politics, and psychoanalytic theory.
This symposium includes papers by academics whose work has inspired Peter Dickens, and which engages with themes central to his own work. These themes include: The distinction between ‘construing’ and socially constructing the environment; the uses and abuses of metaphors between the natural and social worlds; the concept of ‘latent’ biology and the critique of biological or sociological reductionism; the critique of essentialist notions of human nature as either individualistic or mutualistic; the effects of the mental—manual division of labour on internal and external nature; the alienation of humans from nature; the third contradiction of capitalism (between capital and internal nature); the relationship between unconscious mechanisms and social and spatial divisions; the significance of production, consumption and identity in ‘escape attempts’ and pre-figurative utopias.

Confirmed speakers include: Peter Dickens, Ted Benton, Kate Soper, Kathryn Dean, Graham Sharp and 
James Ormrod

This symposium is free to attend, and lunch and refreshments will be provided, but registration is essential. Please visit: http://shop.brighton.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&catid=31&prodid=208

Dr. James S. Ormrod, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, School of Applied Social Science,University of Brighton, Mayfield House,FalmerBN1 9PH, UK.
j.s.ormrod@brighton.ac.uk 
Tel: +44(0)1273 643488

Submissions to Journal of Critical Realism

JCR has recently been acquired by Maney Publishing, a UK-based specialist publisher of academic journals and related books. We think the change is very positive for JCR. A temporary by-product of this change is that we are without an online submission facility. This will be provided in 2014. In the meantime, please send submissions to JCR to the general editor, Mervyn Hartwig, by email attachment. Your contributions in any field relating to critical realism are most welcome. Instructions for authors can be downloaded from our Maney website.

2012 Cheryl Frank Memorial Prize

The Cheryl Frank Committee has decided to award the Cheryl Frank Memorial Prize* for 2012 jointly to Ruth Groff, Ontology Revisited: Metaphysics in Social and Political Philosophy and Nick Hostettler, Eurocentrism: A Marxian Critical Realist Critique. The Committee did not feel it could separate these impressive and ground-breaking pieces of work. Both books are worthy winners.

Ontology Revisited is a finely chiseled and sustained demonstration of the inexorability of ontology. It draws very persuasively on the resources of original critical realism to show how modern social and political philosophy, pace ‘post-metaphysics’, has in fact been dominated by an implicit Humean ontology via Kant. Eurocentrism, for its part, is innovative in its application of dialectical critical realism and Marx. It succeeds in shifting the debate about eurocentricity decisively onto new terrain, elaborating in the process a systematic anti-eurocentric approach to understanding modernity.

The memorial lectures will be delivered in 2013 or early 2014 at a time and place to be arranged with the winners.

IACR Conference 2013 29-31 July Nottingham University

IACR Conference 2013 will be hosted at the University of Nottingham, UK from 29-31 July
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/IACR.html

JCR subscritions, IACR membership and conference registration

There are two ways for individuals to subscribe to JCR. (1) Purchase or renew an IACR membership (this automatically subscribes you to JCR). (2) Purshase or renew an individual subscription to JCR. 

(1) is cheaper than (2) and confers a discounted conference registration fee and IACR voting rights, so that is the way to go unless you are allergic to membership.

Both (1) and (2) can be effected by going to our publisher's website and clicking on Subscribe.

Please contact subscriptions@maneypublishing.com re any queries about membership/subscriptions.

Because of the discounted registration, if you attend our annual IACR conference you should become an IACR member if you are not already one; i.e. you should join IACR before you register. This will qualify you for the discount. If you register without an IACR membership you will pay more than membership plus discounted registration, without the benefit of a JCR subscription and IACR membership.

Cheryl Frank Memorial Prize

The Cheryl Frank Memorial Prize is awarded annually for a book or article that constitutes, motivates or exemplifies the best and/or most innovative new writing in or about the tradition of critical realism, including the philosophy of metaReality, in the previous year. Nominations should be made to the IACR General Secretary, Tone Skinningsrud tone.skinningsrud@uit.no The closing date for nominations is 1st February. The winner is declared on 1st March.
The winner is invited to give the annual Cheryl Frank Memorial Lecture at the IACR Annual Conference or some other suitable venue. If the author wishes, the lecture will be considered for publication in Journal of Critical Realism.

The Cheryl Frank Committee consists of one nominee each from IACR, the Centre for Critical Realism and JCR. The current members are Alan Norrie, Roy Bhaskar and Mervyn Hartwig. Where the work of one of its members is being considered the Committee invites a substitute nomination from the relevant organization.

Cheryl Lynn Frank (1946-2010) was an American scholar and activist. Born on August 1, 1946 in Illinois, she married and had two children; was active in the civil rights movement, participating in Martin Luther King’s march in Selma, Alabama and later established the first domestic violence shelter in the USA (in Champaign, Illinois); she worked as a policy analyst at the state level, as a journalist, editor and freelance writer. She took masters degrees in politics and journalism, did extensive research on the position of women and native Americans in the twentieth century and completed extensive doctoral work in cultural studies and mass communication. She became however increasingly dissatisfied with the dominant positivist and poststructuralist methodologies, and at the same time increasingly interested in spiritual issues.

In November 2002 she met Roy Bhaskar at a meeting of the Foundation of Light (of which she was President) in Ithaca, New York. They corresponded and she joined him in London in February 2003. From then on she was his lover, partner and inseparable companion, and became utterly devoted to his well-being and to the cause of critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality, throwing herself into this work. She died after a short illness on January 22, 2010, leaving, besides Roy, her two children and three grandchildren. Her only published work in critical realism is an essay in Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change (which she co-edited with Roy and others); but she made a huge contribution, assisting Roy in his work, and to the movement and to her many friends within it. The forthcoming collection of essays, Critical Realism and Spirituality, edited by Mervyn Hartwig and Jamie Morgan, is dedicated to her memory.

Past recipients
2010 (joint) Alan Norrie, Dialectic and Difference: Dialectical Critical Realism and the Grounds of Justice and Christian Smith, What is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up
2011 Chris Sarra, Strong and Smart – Towards a Pedagogy for Emancipation: Education for First Peoples

IACR Conference 2013

IACR Conference 2013

Critical realist publications

For lists of publications in the various series, use the following links:

Classical Texts in Critical Realism
http://www.routledge.com/books/series/classical_texts_in_critical_realism_CTCR/

Critical Realism: Interventions
http://www.routledge.com/books/series/critical_realism_interventions_SE0596/

New Studies in Critical Realism and Education
http://www.routledge.com/books/series/new_studies_in_critical_realism_and_education_CRE/

New Studies in Critical Realism and Spirituality
http://www.routledge.com/books/series/new_studies_in_critical_realism_and_spirituality_CRS/

Ontological Explorations
http://www.routledge.com/books/series/ontological_explorations_OE/

Routledge Studies in Critical Realism
http://www.routledge.com/books/series/routledge_studies_in_critical_realism_SE0518/


Other recent publications by critical realists:

Tobin Nellhaus, Theatre, Communication, Critical realism, MacMillan, 2010
http://us.macmillan.com/theatrecommunicationcriticalrealism

Dave Elder-Vass, The Causal Power of Social Structures, Cambridge University Press, 2010
http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521194457

Christian Smith, What is a Person, The University of Chicago Press, 2010 http://tinyurl.com/3a7xuw4A. Martin Byers, Sacred Games, Death, and Renewal in the Ancient Eastern Woodlands: The Ohio Hopewell System of Cult Sodality Heterarchies. Lanham: AltaMira Press 2010.

Nivien Saleh, Third World Citizens and the Information Technology Revolution (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2010) http://www.thirdworldcitizens.info/about-third-world-citizens.html

Andrew Sayer, Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 2011)

IACR | Web Sites

Critical Realism Wiki
The Wiki for the Critical Realism community.

Critical Realism
An electronic forum and (virtual) community committed to discussion and debate concerning Critical Realism and the philosophy of Roy Bhaskar.

Critical Realism News blog
The latest news from the Critical Realism Community

Critical Realism Social Network
A Social Network for Critical Realists

Cambridge Realist Workshop
An informal seminar series that encompasses almost any sort of discussion in the field of methodology/philosophy of science.

Centre for Critical Realism
A charitable trust established in November 1996 with the general aim of supporting critical realist activities, both theoretical and practical.

Journal of Critical Realism

The official journal of IACR 

IACR | Workshops

Workshops and seminars 2010:

Göteborg, Sweden
Department of Sociology,
Sprängkullsgatan 25
Coordinator: Freddy Castro

15.09. Eduardo Medina:
Towards a Model for
Critical Discourse Analysis

20.10. Freddy Castro:
Elder-Vass on The Human Subject

01.12. Ulla-Britt Wennerström and Sofia Persson:
Women in professional interest groups

08.12. Gunnar Gillberg:
The conditions for individualisation among young adults


Cambridge Realist Workshop

Past Workshops:

Centre for Critical Realism (CCR) Seminars
The London Realist Seminar
Lancaster University Critical Realist Workshops

IACR Membership

Anyone can join IACR. Members receive Journal of Critical Realism (quarterly), voting rights in IACR, and significant reductions for the annual conference and other fee charging events. Individuals join by taking out an IACR Member subscription on our publisher's website.


Join IACR and subscribe to the Journal of Critical Realism

About IACR

President
Alan Norrie
University of Warwick, UK
alan.w.norrie@warwick.ac.uk


General Secretary
Tone Skinningsrud
University of Tromsø
Norway
tone.skinningsrud@uit.no


Treasurer
Lodve Svare
University of Tromsø
Norway
lodve.svare@uit.no


General Editor Journal of Critical Realism (JCR)
Mervyn Hartwig
London, UK
mh@jaspere7.demon.co.uk

JCR reviews editor
Mervyn Hartwig


Council members
Gordon Brown, Australia
Cynthia Hamlin, Brazil
Tony Lawson, UK
Wendy Olsen, UK
Brian Pinkstone, Australia
Doug Porpora, USA
Andrew Sayer, UK
Hugh Lacey, USA
Petter Næss, Denmark/Norway
Andrea Maccarini, Italy
Mark Johnson, UK (IT-advisor)



Enquiries:

If you have specific enquiries about IACR you can also contact the IACR Administrator at the following address:

Tone Skinningsrud, Assoc. professor
Dept. of Education,
Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education
University of Tromsoe
N-9037 Tromsoe
Norway

Telephone: +47 776 45254
Fax: +47 776 44554
Mobile: +47 97734158
Email: tone.skinningsrud@uit.no or IACR@uit.no