Dr Chris Gifford, Head of Department of Behavioural and Social Sciences at the (University of Huddersfield) is one of the Keynote Speakers of the BSA Postgraduate Conference ‘Citizenship in the 21st Century: Sociological, Political and Cultural Perspectives’. This event will be held at the University of Huddersfield on 18 June 2014.
In his future presentation at Huddersfield, Dr Gifford will present the paper ‘Being or becoming citizens in late modernity?’. The central claim of this paper is that there is a powerful generational logic to citizenship development that is often overlooked. Conventional understandings of being a citizen imply integration into pre-existing collective identities and institutions that are the product of previous generations. This has been sustained and legitimated by the expectation of a progressive expansion of life-chances. The argument here is that such strategies are becoming exhausted as new generations face increasing restrictions on entry into adult citizenship. Moreover conventional social and educational policy responses aimed at integrating young people into work and nation perpetuate their precarious relationship to citizenship. The second part of the paper argues that we can identify an alternative dynamic to becoming a citizen that is intimately connected to cultural learning, and the creation of new civic virtues and sources of recognition. While such developments remain highly uncertain, the argument of the paper is that it is essential for sociologists to uncover new possibilities for the expansion of citizenship in late modernity.
Dr Nick Stevenson (University of Nottingham) and Dr Darren Langdridge (The Open University) are the other confirmed Keynotes Speakers of this conference.
Registration costs £10 for BSA members and £25 for non-members and is handled by the BSA events team http://portal.britsoc.co.uk/public/event/eventBooking.aspx?id=EVT10340; early registration is advised as there are a very limited amount of places.
For all informal enquiries please contact: PGRNetwork@hud.ac.uk
BSA Sponsored Postgraduate Conference: 'Citizenship in the 21st Century: Sociological, Political and Cultural Perspectives' 