The Contemporary Other, PG Conference April 2013

Over the last couple of months, a few postgraduate friends and I started organising a postgraduate conference. We managed to secure two external key note speakers; Gurminder K. Bhambra from the University of Warwick spoke on Citizens and Others, offering insights into the difficulty of marrying imperial history with contemporary citizenship. She discussed the US and the UK as contemporary examples of this, suggesting that the ongoing move toward “a more perfect union” brings us to a paradoxical juncture wherein the US constitution itself was never incongruent with the systematic subjugation of the other (namely, those who lived on the land now recognised as the united states). She also made mention of the UK history curriculum, that is undergoing a rewriting wherein teaching is to focus specifically on the history of the British isles. This thereby distantiates from education discourse the mulitiplicity of histories that have come to inform Britain as it stands today. This is an ongoing discussion about this matter in the UK media (see here and here).

Professor Gurminder K. Bhambra

Simon Winlow, who was visiting from Teeside University, gave an account of the English Defence League in his talk Don’t know who you are? ... Find somebody to hate. Winlow discussed his conviction that is wrong to assume that there is a growing political consciousness in many working class communities. Rather, he argued, the escalating anxiety borne of the contemporary capitalist system in Britain has been galvanized in the projection of hate onto the Muslim other.

Professor Simon Winlow

A number of external and home speakers presented on politics, structure, disability and representation. This bred a number of really interesting question-lead conversations. A highlight for me was Alex Simpson’s talk on Market Society and the Other. Anchored in the Hegelian conceptions of the Other and the One, he advocated a move toward looking not only at othered peoples, but the agents who bring that otherness into being. For Alex, this is doubtless routed in his concern with the Elite and the super rich. 

On reflection, Winlow and Simpson seemed to share much in common here: the system, and those who perpetuate it, are often sidelined in sociological consideration of the people affected by systems. By looking at this less accessible group, research into the Elite – also being undertaken by our closing speaker, Rowland Atkinson – can help us to theoretically unpick (or, for the more revolutionary, physically dismantle) the process of othering and the various articulations of identity it produces.

Alex Simpson	Dr Rowland Atkinson
Conference delegates

photos courtest of Semire Yekta

Hillary and the gay marriage debate, or, The endless fight for solidity

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton sat down with the Human Rights Campaign. Marriage, she said, is "a fundamental building block of our society", turning what is generally a criticism of gay marriage into a argument for it. You can see the same turn when a republican senator's son came out, prompting him to adopt the pro-gay "stability" stance, albeit with an edge of self-reflection

When Maria Miller, culture secretary and the conservative MP for Basingstoke, gave her statement to parliament on the gay marriage bill, she ended it on a similar note, arguing for marriage through suggesting that it is what provides institutional foundation:

"...Marriage is one of the most important institutions we have. It binds families and society together. It is a building block that promotes stability."

When I mentioned Miller's statement to my students a few weeks ago when we were studying Zymunt Bauman, I asked them what they thought this might suggest. Social theory teaching always works much better if I can get students to transpose abstract thought onto topical matters. Marriage is, fundamentally, fundamental. It offers solidity. That's why it's called an institution. It's an anchor of economic stability - it is as much a practical decision as it is a romantic one. By extending that to gay people, "it promotes stability", as Miller says. The fluidity of life today - go where the jobs are, meet people online - sits in direct tension with an institution like marriage. 

As the liquidity of contemporary living subsumes tradition, the project of marriage - our inclination and ability to commit- becomes gradually more precarious. We can talk ourselves blue in the face about trends in British divorce statistics. Gay marriage, though, and Cameron's inclination to push it through, seems just as relevant. If we can look at the ongoing espousal of marriage through a lens of pragmatism - that it is, almost solely, a practical move on the part of the government - I think we get closer to the truth than Clegg and Cameron can with their turgid ramblings about love.