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Lecture "Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained?"

The Department of Historical Sociology cordially invites you to a lecture "Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained?" given by Prof. Dennis Smith (Loughborough University). The lecture takes place in Jinonice on October 22.

The lecture is part of the lecture series Brexit, Britain and the European Union: A Ramble through a Tangled Forest.

Abstract of the lecture:

In the 2014 European parliamentary elections, the United Kingdom Independence Party led by Nigel Farage was top of the poll in Britain. This led to five years of intense efforts by Conservative UK governments to outbid Mr Farage’s cultivation of anti-EU sentiments. For UK’s leading politicians Brexit was a largely unintended and unexpected consequence. Ironically, in spite of all their efforts, by 2019 Farage was once again top of the UK poll in the European parliamentary elections, this time as leader of the Brexit party. In the meantime an accidental constitutional earthquake had occurred in the UK.

Dennis Smith, emeritus professor at Loughborough, was initiated as a historian at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and as a sociologist at LSE and Leicester University. His books include Civilized Rebels. An Inside Story of the West’s Retreat from Global Power (Routledge),The Rise of Historical Sociology (Polity), Zygmunt Bauman (Polity), Globalization. The Hidden Agenda (Polity), Capitalist Democracy on Trial (Routledge),Norbert Elias and Modern Social Theory (Sage), Barrington Moore. Violence, Morality and Political Change (Macmillan), Conflict and Compromise. Class Formation in English Society 1830-1914 (Routledge), and (with Sue Wright) Whose Europe. The Turn Towards Democracy (Blackwell). He has been Vice-President of the European Sociological Association and Managing Editor of Sociological Reviewand Current Sociology (ISA journal).