First Visiting Speaker - Prof. Rolland Munro

Professor Rolland Munro from the University of Keele has very kindly agreed to be the first visiting speaker to talk with the Post Grad Café. This special meeting will be next Wednesday 9th March at 5pm in the Glamorgan Building common room. This is an important occasion and an encouraging development for the Café, and we hope as many people as possible will be able to attend what will certainly be a fascinating informal discussion.

In order to stimulate discussion Professor Munro has suggested that people should read either Punctualising Identity: Time and the Demanding Relations paper which is in Sociology (online - see below)
or
'A Consumption View of Self: Extension, Exchange and Identity'. In S. Edgell, A Warde and K. Hetherington (eds), Consumption Matters, The Sociological Review Monograph series, 1996, pp 247-272.

http://ejournals.cardiff.ac.uk/?V=1.0&N=100&L=KK8RV2GW7T&S=T_B&C=Sociology

Title: Punctualizing Identity: Time and the Demanding Relation
Author(s): Rolland Munro
Source: Sociology Volume: 38 Number: 2 Page: 293 -- 311
DOI: 10.1177/0038038504040865
Publisher: SAGE Publications

Abstract: Questions of identity, the nuance of self to context or culture, continue to dominate despite a fashion to imagine 'structures' of class, status and ethnicity as becoming less demanding and, hence, more fluid and open to choice. In contrast to a picture of individuals suspended in fluids of their own making, this article introduces the idea of identity being punctualized: a 'revealing' of each specified identity within the here and now; and in response to the 'demand' of others. Accepting there is a positioning effect, requiring those making demands to be in a position to make their specific reading on identity, the article draws on Henry James's novel The Ambassadors, to illustrate a timing effect, in which each 'call' demands a display of identity that annuls other 'calls' - precisely by overtaking these in the here and now. These demands arguably overlap with Heidegger's formulation, in which the demanding relation is general and is presented as the effect of technology: technology transforms everything in nature, including ourselves, into things 'standing in advance'. Relations are not attenuated, so much as it matters more what identity is being produced (and when).
© 2005 Sage Publications
Keywords: enframing; punctualize; relations; revealing; technology; time