Politics inequality and social change

An international conference to mark Professor Mike Savage’s retirement from the LSE Department of Sociology. 

Since his first published writings in 1982, Mike has contributed to the sociological analysis of inequality, both through interventions in classical debates regarding class and stratification, and also through drawing in innovative inter-disciplinary and multi-dimensional perspectives ranging across history, geography, anthropology, cultural studies, and social policy. He has also sought to bridge academic, campaigning, and public facing activities. Mike retired from the LSE Department of Sociology in September 2024, where he has worked since 2012. He is not retiring from academic research, as he starts a new job as part-time Professorial Research Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute in January 2025.  

To mark this transition, the LSE Sociology Department and the International Inequalities Institute are holding a one day conference, not as a retrospective on Mike’s research, but to stimulate future directions for academic debate and critical investigation. Accordingly, the conference will be organized around four core themes that Mike has engaged with, and which mark energising areas of contemporary discussion. Leading speakers will each introduce their current thinking on these topics, not focusing on Mike’s work per se, but on the broader themes he has worked with. 

Conference programme 

10.00am to 11.30am: ‘British’ Social History, convened by Jon Lawrence, Professor of History at Exeter

Foundational historical work by post-war historians, notably EP Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm, placed the British experience at the heart of development of rich scholarship in social history. Over the past two decades, this tradition has been reworked through the decentring of class, enhanced interests in gender and race, and the recognition that the UK needs to be placed in global and imperial perspective. Mike has variously contributed to this renewal through drawing in sociological theory and methodological repertoires in books such as The Dynamics of Working Class Politics (1987) and Identities and Social Chage (2010).  

Confirmed speakers

Prof Peter Mandler, History, Cambridge
Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, History, UCL
Rob Waters, History, QMUL 

11.45am to 1.15pm: Consumption, culture and class, convened by Prof Laurie Hanquinet, Professor of Sociology at ULB, Brussels

In the 1990s, numerous sociologists proclaimed the ‘end of class’ and the rise of individualism and reflexivity. Especially through his role as Director of the University of Manchester’s and the Open University’s Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, Mike was one of the leading voices who critically engaged with Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological heritage to re-energise class analysis, through a greater concern with culture and lifestyle. Mike’s sometimes controversial work includes his co-authored Culture, Class, Distinction (2009), and Social Class in the 21st century.  

Confirmed speakers

Prof Annick Preiur, Sociology, University of Aalbourg, Denmark
Dr Faiza Shaheen, Sociology, LSE 
Dr Simone Varriale, Sociology, Loughborough University

2.30pm to 3.45pm: Urbanism and Belonging, convened by Prof Maria Luisa (‘Lula’) Mendez, Professor of Sociology at University of Chile

A central feature of Mike’s work is to insist on the dimensionality of social relations, and the need to resist social scientific abstractions in order to draw out the spatiality and temporality of social life. His work has contributed to urban sociology, and more particularly the insistence that territoriality and identification with place (‘belonging’), as well as urban power dynamics, plays a vital role in contemporary life.  

Confirmed speakers 

Prof Talja Blokland Humboldt University, Berlin
Dr Shabna Begum CEO, Runnymede Trust
Prof Patrick Le Gales, Sciences Po, Paris

4.00pm to 5.30pm: Methodological Challenges & Innovations, convened by Prof Susan Halford, Bristol 

Mike has been a consistent – and perhaps maverick - methodological innovator, arguing for the need to recognise and understand ‘the social life of methods’. This pushes us beyond ‘tried and trusted’ methodological repertoires while - at the same time - subjecting methodological innovation to rigorous inquiry. This call opens-up a wider debate about the sociological methods that are appropriate for the 21st century. What methods align with the contemporary theoretical concerns? With the changing social world? And what kind of Sociology might these support on a rapidly changing funding landscape? This panel brings together eminent scholars from across the discipline to respond to and debate these provocations.  

Confirmed speakers 

Dr Biagio Aragona, Social Science, University of Naples, 
Prof David Grusky, Sociology, Stanford University  
Prof Annette Lareau, Sociology, University of Pennsylvania