This special issue is based on papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Marxist Critical Theory in Eastern Europe: In Memory of Zygmunt Bauman, held at Sichuan University, China, in 2024. Many thanks to all contributors.
Expressions of interest are invited for contributions to an edited collection on Friendship in Troubled Times: Social, Cultural and Political Perspectives, following an approach by a reputable academic press.
This year Professor Craig Calhoun (Arizona State University and Princeton University) joins us to reflect on the future of liberal democracy amid the Western world’s crises, institutional decline, and the resurgence of authoritarianism in a dialogue with Peter Beilharz.
5:30-7:30pm, 25 August, 2026
At the Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture
by Andreas Reckwitz
Contemporary inheritance society isn’t exhausted by questions of wealth alone. It speaks much more to the fact that in late modernity, at multiple levels, the general societal appreciation of being confronted by an inheritance from past generations has also sharpened. One views oneself and others from the perspectives of: individuals, as social groups, as a national society, and even as the species Homo sapiens, who inherit in the present from the past or, in the future, will inherit something.
Australian National University School of Sociology presents Thesis Eleven founding editor Prof. Peter Beilharz (Sichuan University) as a part of the ongoing ANU Sociology Seminar Series.
Date: Wednesday 19 August, 2026
Time: 12 – 1pm (AEST)
by John Lechte
Edgar Morin was born Edgar Nahoum, of Sephardic Jewish parents, in Salonica (now Thessaloniki), Greece, on 8 July 1921. He died, at the very grand age of 104, at Neuilly-sur-Seine on 29 May 2026.
Thesis Eleven is delighted to share details of the first public event in the inaugural Bauman Memorial Conversations, a new biennial series of public dialogues hosted by the Bauman Institute.
The 2026 Conversations, “Thinking Displacement,” will explore displacement in its human, ecological, and intellectual dimensions. The first conversation will be held online on March 25, 2026.
Speaker: Professor James Smithies
Co-Chairs: Prof Joy Damousi and Prof Peter Beilharz
Convener: A/Prof Rachel Busbridge
When: Friday 1 August 2-4pm AEDT.
Where: Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus
by Siniša Malešević
War is not an exception that suddenly interrupts normal social life. Nearly every aspect of social life including the governance structures, social hierarchies, gender and sexual relations, religious identities, class dynamics, ethno-racial stratification, educational practices, heath systems or the administrativeand administrative apparatuses have all been molded by legacies of specific wars. Whether we like it or not, warfare has historically been and remains a norm that constantly shapes our social order.
Despite strong criticism, functional reasoning is still present in social theory and research. However, references often remain hidden. As a consequence, potentials cannot unfold, nor shortcomings be reflected. Starting from this consideration, our special issue aims to reconsider the potentials and shortcomings of functional lines of thinking in current sociology.
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