Relational Sociology in Action! Zelizer and the Climate Crisis

You are warmly invited to the 2025 Thesis Eleven Annual Lecture. This year Professor Mark Davis (University of Leeds) joins us to discuss the essential role of sociology in responding to contemporary challenges during periods of crisis and transformation. This event is hosted by Thesis Eleven Journal and sponsored by the Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture.

This lecture seeks to underscore the essential role of sociology in responding to contemporary challenges during periods of crisis and transformation. It will do so by showing how the ‘relational’ approach pioneered by Viviana A. Zelizer has been instrumental in shaping actionable pathways forward for policy and citizens in the face of environmental and economic turbulence. In refusing the instrumental and utility optimising behaviour of an apparently ‘rational actor’, Bourdieu’s (2005: 209) “anthropological monster” beloved by orthodox economics and its behaviour models, Zelizer introduces a range of key concepts that provide the basis for a sociological understanding of how people understand and use money. Drawing on empirical examples from my projects in the UK’s crowdfunding and household decarbonisation (‘retrofit’) sectors, I will argue that Zelizer’s work has profound significance for scholars, teachers and citizens striving to solve the climate crisis in fair and equitable ways.

Mark Davis is Professor of Economic Sociology in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds (UK). An expert in Zygmunt Bauman’s social theory, Mark’s research also applies insights from new economic sociology to problems of sustainability and climate change. His work co-created the UK’s Community Municipal Investment (CMI) product that to date has raised £30M for local government-led net zero projects. More recently, he co-led the interdisciplinary social science team that developed the relational approach to energy research, targeting domestic retrofit. His last book was Crowdfunding and the Democratization of Finance (Bristol University Press 2021). He is the British Science Association’s President of Sociology & Social Policy for 2025. He has been associated with Thesis Eleven since 2009.

The Thesis Eleven Annual Lectures commenced in 2002. Lecturers have included Bernard Smith, George Markus, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Joanna Bourke, Maria Pia Lara, Stuart Macintyre, Alastair Davidson, Philippa Mein Smith, George Steinmetz, Ron Jacobs and Eleanor Townsley, Peter Thomas, Krishan Kumar, Keith Tester, Nikos Papastergiadis, Chiara Bottici, Noeleen Murray, Emilia Palonen, Michael Peters, Peter Beilharz, Susan L Robertson, Jeff Alexander and Ira Raja. In 2020 there was no lecture, but the Covid Crisis Series online instead.

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