Wednesday 4th October
‘Girls will be boys and boys will be girls’. Sex and Gender in the 21st Century
The first meeting of the GPS will be at the Director’s Lounge at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham at 7 pm.
This is a social and open discussion meeting. It is a nice opportunity to say ‘hello’ after the summer and tell you about the programme for the winter programme.
The title of open discussion will be ‘Girls will be boys and boys will be girls’: Sex and Gender in Contemporary Society. Is there a difference between sex and gender? Is sexuality fixed for human beings, and if it is fixed or fluid, then what are the implications for gender roles in society? What are the ontological, ethical and legal implications of the sex/gender system? We shall discuss these issues in an open, philosophical and respectful way.
This is a useful site that defines the terms sex and gender:
Wednesday 18th October
Time, Emotion and Mental Health a talk by David Garrett (Gloucestershire Philosophical Society)
David has been a member of the GPS for over 10 years and this will be his third talk to the Society.
He is a social constructionist and his presentation is based on how individuals and society construct their understanding of the world with the main themes being how we deal with time, emotion and mental health. The presentation also includes how we all construct mental models and use them in our daily lives. The session will be part interactive and participants are encouraged to get involved.”
Wednesday 1st November
The Conservative Party’s Crisis of Political Reproduction a talk by Phil Burton-Cartledge
Are the difficulties facing the Tories simply a matter of exhaustion, of the public getting fed up with them as they did in 1997 and 1964-66? Without peering beneath the surface, that appears to be the case. The antics of Johnson, Truss, and the do-nothing politics of Sunak are enough to give the most loyal Conservative voter pause. But, as my book – The Party’s Over: The Rise and Fall of the Conservatives from Thatcher to Sunak – argues, the Tories have a far more serious problem: a crisis of political reproduction. The mass base the Tories have built is overly dependent on older people generally and retirees in particular, and is a coalition premised on high property values, home ownership, rising pensions, and (to an extent) shielding the elderly while attacking the living standards of working age people and gutting the state of its capacity to do anything. Voting Conservative is not a consequence of getting old, but of the tendency of acquiring property throughout one’s life – however meagre that might be. If a Tory government is a block on this process of acquisition, it’s not going to generate future Conservative voters. And that makes the job of winning elections progressively more difficult. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, their policy preferences and rhetoric, especially their emphasis on “anti-woke” politics is wedded to cohering this coalition, which rules out the possibility of their reaching out to younger layers. In short, it is very difficult to see how the party can forge a new coalition of voters that can win them the next two general elections.
Bio: Dr Phil Burton-Cartledge is a course director at the University of Derby where he has led the Sociology programme for the last eight years. He blogs regularly about current affairs at his blog, All That Is Solid, and has written widely for Tribune, Jacobin, the New Statesman, and The Independent among others. The Party’s Over is the second paperback edition of Falling Down: The Conservative Party and the Decline of Tory Britain. It is his first book.
Wednesday 15th November
Wittgenstein on Science and Religion a talk by Genia Schönbaumsfeld
Genia Schönbaumsfeld is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton who specializes in Wittgenstein, Epistemology, Kierkegaard and the Philosophy of Religion.
Before coming to Southampton, Genia Schönbaumsfeld studied Philosophy at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge and the University of Vienna. Genia has been a Visiting Fellow at New College, Oxford and a Visiting Professor at the University of Regensburg, Germany. From 2003-06 she held a prestigious ‘Hertha Firnberg’ research fellowship at the University of Vienna, awarded by the Austrian Science Fund.
Genia is the author of A Confusion of the Spheres – Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Religion (Oxford University Press, 2007), The Illusion of Doubt (Oxford University Press, 2016), and Wittgenstein on Religious Belief (Cambridge University Press, 2023). She is Associate Editor of the journal Philosophical Investigations, Advisory Board member of The Nordic Wittgenstein Review and Editorial Board Member of Anthem Studies in Wittgenstein. In 2020 she was elected to Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
This is online seminar on Teams. You can find a link here to register: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/9e01d25d-4d6b-4c39-8085-7b7565b582b9@9ecbb753-a8b9-4f1b-b206-971692798a67
Wednesday 29th November
A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie a talk by Dan Evans
The petty bourgeoisie ― the insecure class between the working class and the bourgeoisie ― is hugely significant within global politics. Yet it remains something of a mystery.
Initially identified as a powerful political force by theorists like Marx and Poulantzas, the petit-bourgeoisie was expected to decline, as small businesses and small property were gradually swallowed up by monopoly capitalism. Yet, far from disappearing, structural changes to the global economy under neoliberalism have instead grown the petty bourgeoisie, and the individualist values associated with it have been popularized by a society which fetishizes “aspiration”, home ownership and entrepreneurship. So why has this happened?
Dr Dan Evans is currently a researcher in WISERD Civil Society, exploring the changing world of work and the role and relevance of trade unions within the modern workplace. He previously worked for WISERD between 2014 and 2017, where he worked on the WMCS as well as researching childcare provision and the pupil deprivation grant. After leaving WISERD in 2017 he worked as a sociology and politics lecturer at Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning and at the University of Bath. He then had an extended hiatus from academia, working as a frontline support worker with rough sleepers in Cardiff for nearly 5 years. While outside academia he continued to pursue his academic interests and has written articles for popular publications such as Jacobin, New Socialist, and Planet: The Welsh Internationalist. He co-edited The Welsh Way: Essays on Neoliberalism and Devolution, which was published by Parthian Press in 2021, and he has recently finished a solo book on the petty bourgeoisie- A Nation of Shopkeepers– which was published by Repeater Books in early 2023.
Wednesday 13th December
Busting some myths about Hegel and Marx a talk by Gordon Finlayson
Professor Gordon Finlayson teaches philosophy at Sussex. He works on German philosophy and Frankfurt School critical theory, especially Adorno and Habermas. He was a graduate student alongside William Large, back in the day.
All talks will take place at the FCH Campus of the University of Gloucestershire in Rm HC203, except the talk by Genia Schönbaumsfeld, which will take place on Teams.
We are a local partner of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and these events are funded by a grant from them. Their website can be found here: https://royalinstitutephilosophy.org/.
Gloucestershire Philosophical Society 