On March 18, 2025, Fred Block will visit ASU's Tempe campus for a two-part event. First, Block will host a webinar from 10:30-11:30am. (You can register for the Zoom webinar here.) 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.
Register to attend online or in person here.
Talk Details:
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.
About Fred Block:
Fred Block is Research Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Davis. His books include: Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse, The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi’s Critique (with Margaret Somers), Capitalism: The Future of an Illusion, and Democratizing Finance (with Robert Hockett). He is also the founder and president of the Center for Engaged Scholarship.
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