The general seminar invites international and national guests to present and discuss ongoing research. The general seminar is also an important forum to collectively discuss and contribute to the quality of ongoing research and doctoral theses at the department. Book releases, associate professor- and professor’s lectures are followed by a reception.
Book launch: Alternative Futures in a Heating World: Visions and Vision Work of the Swedish Climate Movement
Presenters: Mattias Wahlström, University of Gothenburg and Lotte Schack, Lund University
Discussant: Martin Hultman, University of Gothenburg
Chair: Håkan Thörn, University of Gothenburg
Lotte Schack and Mattias Wahlström present their new book Alternative Futures in a Heating World: Visions and Vision Work of the Swedish Climate Movement, co-authored with Joost de Moor (UC Louvain), Katrin Uba (Uppsala University) and Magnus Wennerhag (Södertörn University).
Lotte Schack, PhD in sociology, works as researcher at the Sociology of Law department at Lund University. Her PhD thesis Children of the Crisis examined how Swedish climate activists construct and negotiate ideas of political subjectivity, responsibility, and justice.
Mattias Wahlström, Professor of sociology at GU, has published widely on social movements, protest, political violence and repression.
Martin Hultman is Professor of sociology at GU with a specialization in science and technology studies (STS) focusing primarily on four areasRead more about the book: energy, climate, environmental legislation and economics. Among Hultman's books are Climate Obstruction (2022); and Ecological Mascit (2018).
Read more about the book
Final seminar: Nathan Siegrist
Title: AUTONOMOUS SPACE: Squatting, Neoliberal Urbanism, and the Problem of Subsumption in Ljubljana, Slovenia
Discussants: Margit Mayer, Center for Metropolitan Studies Technische Universität, Berlin.
Anton Törnberg, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
Chair: Stefano Longo, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
For participation via Zoom, please contact hakan.thorn@gu.se
NOTE! Room K002
Nathan Siegrist is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Gothenburg. His research focuses on how urban movements connected to squats and autonomous spaces influence urban development in contemporary Europe. For these purposes, he has a particular interest in current developments in Central and Eastern Europe.
Margit Mayer is Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies at TU Berlin. Her research focuses on critical urban studies, social movements and U.S. politics and she has published numerous books and articles on these topics. Her latest book is Die US-Linke und die Demokratische Partei: Über die Herausforderungen progressiver Politik in der Biden-Ära (2022).
Anton Törnberg is Associate Professor in Sociology. His research primarily focuses on far-right movements on the Internet, with an emphasis on radicalization processes and violent-extremist and xenophobic rhetoric. His latest book is Intimate Communities of Hate. Why Social Media Fuels Far-Right Extremism (2024).
Associate Professor Lecture: Patrik Vulkan
Title: The Inflation of Inequality - A Sociological Analysis of Inflation, Income and Purchasing Power through the Lens of Boundary Struggles
Chair: Björn Halleröd, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
Language: English.
NOTE! Room D143
In this lecture, I will present and discuss my current area of research, which concerns how income, inflation and purchasing power interact to shape economic inequality among different social groups in Sweden. Taking as a starting point my previous research on the Swedish wage-setting system, and on how it can obscure certain class- and income-based foundations of economic inequality, I will discuss my efforts to apply a sociological analysis to a subject commonly understood as belonging firmly within the field of economics: inflation and inflation policy.
I will explore how sociological concepts can help illuminate the structural and institutional sources of economic inequality, as well as the role sociology can play in highlighting and nuancing what Nancy Fraser calls boundary struggles. These are struggles over what is considered to belong within, or to fall outside, the logic of the capitalist economic system. Such boundaries can shape both our understanding of what sociological research can be, as well as the possible arenas of social struggle.
Associate Professor Lecture: Ylva Wallinder
Title: Sociological Curiosity – as a Motivation and Method
Chair: Mattias Wahlström, University of Gothenburg
NOTE! Room D138
In this lecture, I will reflect on some of the concrete experiences that have shaped me as a sociologist and university teacher, and on why sociology has become, for me, an empirical science in which theory serves as a central analytical and methodological tool, rather than an end in itself. I will discuss how and why sociology, and sociological curiosity, are important enablers to imagine alternatives to dominant perspectives and interpretations of different materials, methods, and forms of data.
Approaching empirical research with a curious – and at times naïve – sociological gaze, I have engaged with a broad range of empirical settings and methods, combining ethnographic fieldwork, narrative interviews, survey and register data. By drawing on theories of organisational reproduction of similarity – with particular focus on social capital, cultural cloning, and social sustainability in practice – I have sought to understand and explore differences and contrasts within and between organisations, individuals, categories, and institutions. These contrasts show us how tacit knowledge, norms, and expectations shape the boundaries of what employees and organisation members in Sweden are allowed and expected to do. The lecture also considers power and influence as relational phenomena, and concludes with a reflection on how researchers’ and university teachers’ choices of empirical focus shape the questions that are asked, the perspectives that are made visible, and the knowledge that is (re)produced.
Associate Professor Lecture: Elena Bogdanova
Title: TBA
Chair: TBA
NOTE! Room D250
Seminarium: On Utopian Thought and Practice
Participants: Sören Mau, Independent, Paula Mulinari, Malmö University, Carl Cassegård, University of Gothenburg
Chair: Johan Alfonsson, University of Gothenburg/Halmstad University
Note! Time and place: 15.15-17.00, Husaren
Marx famously wrote that he had no intention of writing "recipes for the cook-shops of the future". Many Marxists have since been sceptical of utopian thinking. In recent years, however, in the shadow of resurgent fascism, accelerating climate change, genocide and deepening inequality, the need to imagine a world beyond capitalism has become urgent. In the wake of these developments, utopian thinking has attracted renewed interest.
During this seminar, utopia will be discussed from three different perspectives, presented by Sören Mau, Carl Cassegård and Paula Mulinari, who each work with utopian thought.
Sören Mau revisits the standard Marxist objections to utopianism: that it is ineffective, impossible or undesirable. Those objections largely held in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, but our historical moment calls for a re-evaluation of the political potential of utopian thinking, and for a renewed capacity to imagine a life beyond capitalism.
If utopia is a keyword for politics today, so is catastrophe. In Marxist and socialist thought, utopia has been imagined not only as the negation of a catastrophic present but as the continuation of progress, above all of the productive forces. Carl Cassegård asks whether socialist utopia can be salvaged from the premise of material affluence and the domination of nature, and whether a conception of freedom worth striving for can be worked out on a devastated earth.
For utopian thought to become more than theory, it has to translate into practice. Paula Mulinari turns to the workplace, examining the utopian thinking that workers articulate through workplace struggles, utopia less as a recipe for the future than as something already at stake in conflicts over how work is organised.
Final seminar: Veronica Flyman
Title: TBA
Discussants: Kerstin Jacobsson, University of Gothenburg
Andreas Henriksson, Karlstad University
Chair: TBA
NOTE! Room D250
Lecture: Between Belonging and Alienation: Environmental Awareness among Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Question of Land
Presenter: Maisalon Dallashi, Stockholm University
NOTE! Room Husaren
Maisalon Dallashi has a Ph D in Sociology and her research focuses on education, labor market inequalities, environmental issues, and patterns of violence and crime within Palestinian society. She examines how structural segregation and systemic inequality shape everyday life and opportunities for both Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel. She is currently developing her postdoctoral research at the Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, exploring Palestinian migration, statelessness, and transnational belonging. Alongside her academic work, she actively advocates for Palestinian rights, striving to connect critical research with meaningful social and political change.
(Joint seminar with CSM-RESIST and Environmental Sociology)