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Lecture "New Europe, Crumbling Continent"

The Department of Historical Sociology cordially invites you to a lecture "New Europe, Crumbling Continent" given by Prof. Dennis Smith (Loughborough University). The lecture takes place in Jinonice on October 23.

Abstract of the Lecture:

World War One accelerated the disintegration of dynastic imperialism that had already been signalled by Spain’s military defeat in 1898. After 1945 Cold War structures imposed an iron immobility for four decades but they, too, crumbled, followed, after 9/11, by the shattering of much of Europe’s hinterland. The European Union has spread itself across this shaking earth, a ménage à quatre between a North and South that have known each other far too well and a West and East that have known each other far too little.

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).