Sociology

 

Department of Sociology

Brownbag Colloquium

With support from the Arts Lectureship Fund

November 6, 1:00pm

BAC 325

After the Crisis:  Social Inequality and theEconomic Recovery

 

Dr. Matthew Hayes

Sociology, St. Thomas University

 

The financial crisis and the recession appear to be over.  But their effects continue to reverberate throughout the economy, and will have pronounced social effects for some time to come.  While the spectacular collapse of stock markets in the fall of 2008 is the main way that the crisis manifested itself, its lasting legacy will be the way in which it brought to a head the issue of social inequality in late capitalism.  The presentation will draw out the importance of social inequality as a leading cause of the crisis, and will discuss how this is likely to be accentuated as a result of the bank bailouts.  The collapse of the fall of 2008 marked the final moment of post-war capitalism, characterized as it was in the West by shared increases in living standards.  We will discuss the viability of continued economic growth in the future, and discuss its likely social costs.  We will also discuss the possibility of alternatives to the pessimistic scenery that appears to be closing in on us.

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