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In the next open seminar of the TLU Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Life-course Studies, Prof. Michael D. Kennedy from Brown University, US will give a talk about a cultural sociological method for comparing catastrophes in the making. Prof Kennedy has been a good cooperation partner of the Institute of International Social Studies at TLU since the 1990s and we are very happy to invite you all to take part in the discussion on different discourses of epoch ends.

December 14^th, 2022, at 15:00 – 16:30 

M648 at Tallinn University

Abstract: 

In these times, discourses of epoch ends are plentiful, leading with climate catastrophe and more recently invoked with the war on Ukraine and the effects of pandemic. Following a brief review of the variety of narratives defining epoch ends, in past, present, and future tenses, Prof Kennedy will present a schematic allowing for more systematic comparisons. To illustrate, he contrasts qualities of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With this illustration, one might in particular consider the magnitudes and concentrations of loss, on the one hand, and on the other, the variable ways in which claims to expertise and truthfulness are mobilized in order to address uncertain futures. He organizes this comparison to facilitate efforts to connect catastrophes beyond their most proximate damages, so that we might develop a different discourse of global solidarity, one that emerges from within catastrophes in the making rather than superimposed on top of them by schema generated in other conjunctures and for different purposes.   

Michael D. Kennedy is Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Throughout his career, Kennedy has addressed East European social movements and systemic change with recent engagements around both Ukraine and Kosova. For the last 20 years, he also has worked in the sociology of public knowledge, global transformations, and cultural politics, with particular focus on social movements and universities. He continues to work in global and transnational sociology, focusing now on how various articulations of difference and solidarity travel. Recent political transformations within the USA and across the world have moved him toward a more knowledge cultural and public sociology, focusing especially on how communities of discourse use various kinds of questions, styles of reasoning, and forms of evidence to identify the qualities of justice defining various forms of social organization and modes of transformation.

The series of open seminars is organized by the TLU Center of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Life Studies (CILCS), funded by the European Union Regional Development Fund (ASTRA project "TLU TEE Tallinn University as a promoter of intelligent lifestyle"). In 2022, the seminars are co-organised by the consortium of YouthLife Project which has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952083.