Talk with Fred Block

Arizona State University's Center for Work and Democracy is hosting Fred Block, Professor of Sociology at UC Davis, on March 18th for a hybrid, two-part event.

Part One: 10:30 to 11:30am (virtually via Zoom)

• First, Block will host a webinar from 10:30-11:30am. (You can register for the Zoom webinar here.)  

Part Two: 4:30 to 6:30pm at ASU's Tempe campus in West Hall, room 135

• Later, from 4:30-6:00pm, he will present his talk, "When the Old is Dying and the New Cannot be Born: Understanding the Blocked Transition to a Habitation Society" with commentary from ASU's Craig Calhoun, in room 135 in West Hall.

Imprisoned in a fascist prison in 1930, Antonio Gramsci insisted that a blocked transition from one kind of society to another produces all kinds of morbid symptoms. Block argues that the current crisis of democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere is a result of the blocked transition from an industrial society to a habitation society. We already have a habitation economy because most paid employment is in creating and maintaining the soft and hard infrastructure of the communities in which we live. However, we mistakenly try to run that economy through the policies and practices that we inherited from the industrial era. Block describes four distinct pathways through which those policies and practices produce the ongoing degradation of our habitation, and he suggests what reforms would allow people to create vibrant, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable communities.

You can register for the Zoom webinar talk and in-person session by clicking the button below.