Theme 4 Key Questions
We focus on a series of linked questions which allow us to explore taken for granted assumptions about current beliefs about cultural values and politics.
1. Social Cohesion
How does social cohesion vary in different (temporal and spatial) locations. What are the kinds of projects devoted to achieving social cohesion, and how do they draw on technologies and expertise?
2. Exclusion and Fragmentation
How does the idea and practice of exclusion vary in different locations? How are claims to inclusion related to those of exclusion? What kinds of groups and practices are seized upon and made visible in moral panics about 'outsiders', and which groups are?
3. Technology and expertise
What kinds of cultural values are embedded in technology and expertise? How do these cultural values become naturalized and how are they contested?
4. Change as a cultural value
Change is sometimes seen as a neutral term, which carries no cultural connotation, but it is also an exhortation and requires claims about both future and past. It can also be seen as a constant, in that the idea that there is dramatic change has a long history. How does the idea of change come to play an important role as a taken for granted, apparently neutral driver, and what kinds of management is implicated in change projects of various kinds. What kinds of historical absences does the idea of change ignore?
5. Methods and expertise
What kinds of methods can be used to critically examine changing cultural values, and what kinds of innovation might be needed in both qualitative and quantitative method? How does methodological expertise itself operate to embody cultural values?
Theme organisation
The work of the theme will be developed via two main projects, each of which will comprise a number of inquiries, with an integrative project examining common concerns across the two main projects. follow the links on the left to see a summary of each project.