Global Media System, Public Knowledge and Democracy
Much of the world is moving towards the entertainment-centred, market-based media model of the United States. If this continues, we will enter a new era of political ignorance. James Curran is director of the Media Research Programme at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Re-Writing the History of the Constitution: from the miraculous to the political
Was the US constitution the work of confident demigods and innovators or the handiwork of anxious political leaders who relied on longstanding Anglo-American political traditions to save a republican in crisis? Carol Berkin is presidential distinguished professor of history at Baruch College and The Graduate Centre, CUNY.
Thinking Like a Social Scientist: a lecture by Professor Ron Anderson
In this new series of lunchtime lectures, nine of LSE's most senior academics explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed.
Russia and Europe: new neighbours defining a new neighbourhood
Russia, Ukraine and the other countries of the former Soviet Union now share a common border with the European Union that both divides and unites. Strong relations between the neighbours will increasingly be defined by trade, and even more by investment in both directions. The challenge is for economic relations to reinforce political relationships that will help both neighbours thrive in a globalised world.
The Last Resistance
Jacqueline Rose's book The Last Resistance explores the power of writing to create and transform our political lives and examines the role of literature in the Zionist imagination.
Thinking Like a Social Scientist: a lecture by Professor Danny Quah
In this new series of lunchtime lectures, nine of LSE's most senior academics explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed.
Iraq: The Way Out
Jonathan Steele will argue that the occupation has failed, not because of a lack of pre-war planning, but because of a lack of informed political analysis by US decision-makers and the British Foreign Office. They failed to see that Islamists, Sunni and Shia, would fill the post-Saddam vacuum and that most Iraqis would quickly come to resent yet another Western intervention in the Middle East.
Thinking Like a Social Scientist: a lecture by Professor Stuart Corbridge
This lecture asks if the global AIDS response has been good for human rights but bad for disease control? Alex de Waal is programme director at the Social Science Research Council and author of AIDS and Power: why there is no political crisis yet.
The New Politics of Identity
The panel will discuss Bhikhu Parekh's new book, A New Politics of Identity (Palgrave, March 2008) covering the impact of globalisation on ethnic, religious and national identities. David Goodhart is editor of Prospect. John Keane is professor of politics at the University of Westminster and at the Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin. Bhikhu Parekh is professor of political philosophy, University of Westminster.
Two Challenges to Democratic Cititzenship:is the EU the solution or part of the problem?
This lecture will consider questions about European identity and new problems of citizenship raised by the formation of the European Union. Richard Bellamy is professor of political science and director of the School of Public Policy, University College London. John F Jungclaussen is economic correspondent at Die Zeit.
Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century
The threat of terrorism is now part of the landscape of daily lives all over the world, yet we have hardly begun to think properly about it. In his new book Terror and Consent and in this lecture Professor Bobbitt argues that we are fighting these wars with weapons and concepts which though useful to us in previous conflicts have now been superseded. He aims to provide a fundamental rethinking of most generally accepted ideas about terror in the modern world - what it is, how it operates and ab
A Critical Defense of Secularism
The global revival of religion has raised fundamental questions about its role in politics and its claim that it serves as a principle of identity, indispensable to the continuing survival of communities. This series brings together leading thinkers and scholars to encourage discussion and debate on this crucial contemporary theme. Cécile Laborde, reader in political theory, School of Public Policy, University College London.
The Post American World
Global power is shifting, and wealth and power are bubbling up in unexpected places. Fareed Zakaria considers not so much the decline of America, but the impact of the rise of "the rest". This transition of power will redefine America's role as the arbiter of the world's political, economic, and cultural issues and force it to accommodate new heavyweights. Zakaria offers an illuminating view of our increasingly complicated future, the growing influence of rapidly developing nations, and how thes
Central Banking and the Credit Crunch
Howard Davies is working on a book about the future of central banking to be published in 2009 by Princeton University Press. He will assess the ways in which central banks around the world have responded to the credit crisis and what that implies for their role in financial sector regulation in the future. Howard Davies is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Prior to this, from 1997-2003 he was Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the single regulato
The Prospect of Democratisation in Afghanistan
Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta is Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, a position he has held since May 2006. Foreign Minister Spanta earned a Master degree in Political Sciences, Sociology and International Relations and a PhD degree from Aachen University in Political Sciences where he also taught as a professor from 1992 to 2005. In January 2005, Dr. Spanta returned to teach at Kabul University, and later became the advisor on foreign affairs to President Hamed Karzai. His nomination as Fore
LSE Literary Weekend - The Financial Crisis, Climate Change and Energy
Political action and intervention, on local, national and international levels, is going to have a decisive effect on whether or not we can limit global warming, as well as how we adapt to that already occurring. At the moment, however, Anthony Giddens argues controversially, we do not have a systematic politics of climate change.
LSE Literary Weekend - I Shall Die by Inches: Contemporary Approaches to Death and Dying
'All but death' wrote Emily Dickinson 'can be adjusted', and yet, the cold fact that bodies must eventually die only serves to hide the reality of death as a contested cultural domain, where competing notions of public and private, tradition and innovation, individual and collective, are played out, and discourses within literature, art, jurisprudence, medicine, religion, and politics all stake their claim to knowledge of the great unknown. This talk will illuminate the social aspects of death
Howard Davies in Conversation with Lord Goldsmith QC
The separation of powers idea is at the heart of all legal democracies. Yet within those democracies there will often be positions of high office which require their holders to perform functions which are both legal and political. In this series of events senior figures who hold or have held positions of this type talk about their lives in the law, the nature of their office, the institutions which they serve, their roles and responsibilities within those institutions, the role of lawyers in gov
Declining Hegemon? The United States and the World of Crisis
How will the world economic crisis impact the United States? Are we now witnessing the end of the American era? Michael Cox is professor of international relations and co-director of IDEAS at LSE. Danny Quah is head of department and professor of economics at LSE.
Thinking about Evidence and Risk
In this lunchtime series of lectures, a selection of LSE's academics from across the spectrum of the social sciences explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed.
