02 April 2014
UniSA’s Hawke Research Institute and Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre are set to present a wide ranging discussion to explore Australia post the GFC, unpacking what the crisis has meant for politics, policy, our sense of security and order, and notions of capitalism and social capital.
The discussion will feature leading commentators, researcher and sociologist Professor Robert Holton from Trinity College, Dublin and Adjunct Professor at UniSA’s Hawke Research Institute and Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University, John Carroll, in conversation with Hawke Institute Director Professor Anthony Elliott.
The event, Australia after the GFC, will be held on April 3 at 6pm in the Bradley Forum, level 5, Hawke Building, City West campus.
Prof Elliott says the focus will be not only on the immediate material impacts of the GFC, but go deeper to explore the cultural and political consequences several years on from the initial shock.
“The impact of the collapse of world financial markets saw whole nations teeter on the brink of financial extinction, governments fall and international systems of cooperation waver,” Prof Elliott says.
“It was a meltdown not only of our sense of what is financially secure – banks, the security of capital assets, the financial liquidity of nations – but it also rattled some previously secure ideologies and systems - capitalism, democracy, the free market, the justice system.
“Ironically nothing was as ‘safe as houses’ anymore.
“Much like a tsunami the GFC has had waves of impact, the first being most obviously destructive but the other waves eroding our social and political fabric at a deeper level.”
Prof Elliott says the presentation with two leading international thinkers and researchers will bring new perspectives to our view of the GFC and examine how it has influenced how we are building our global future. He says Profs Holton and Carroll will provide thought-provoking insights into the volatile world of global capitalism and its consequences for Australia in the twenty-first century.
Professor Robert Holton
Prof Holton of the Department of Sociology, Trinity College, Dublin, is continuing his research into globalisation. His recent research includes analyses of global networks, the making of globalisation, cosmopolitanism, globalisation and cricket. Professor Holton has recently completed a major sociological study of cosmopolitanism.
Professor John Carroll
Prof Carroll is a Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne. His work focuses on culture, and its crucial role in the human search for meaning, with particular reference to the modern Western society. His recent books include The Existential Jesus (2007), Ego and Soul—the Modern West in Search of Meaning (2008), and Greek Pilgrimage—In Search of the Foundations of the West (2010).
Media contact: Michèle Nardelli office: 08 8302 0966 mobile: 0418 823 673 email: Michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au
