We are pleased to announce the upcoming meetings with Prof. Vandenberghe that will take place at the Faculty of Social Sciences. The event is organized by the Department of Sociology of Gender and Family at the Institute of Sociology, University of Wrocław. The visit takes place within the Visiting Professors Program under task no. 9 IDUB of the “Excellence Initiative – Research University” Program (IDUB).

Talk: Critical Events, Fluid Conjunctures, Explosive Situations
Prof. Vandenberghe will present a social-theoretical framework to analyze critical events and explosive situations in real time. The talk will be based on the book he is currently writing about the political situation in Brazil (2013-2022). The lecture will focus on how critical events (elections, revolts, coups d’états, wars, etc.) destabilize the routines of action and bring whole systems to the brink. Instead of analyzing the relation between agency and structure, Prof. Vandenberghe will focus on the relation between event and structure and investigate the emergence of fluid conjunctures in times of chaotic social, cultural and political change.

Reading Seminar: Political Hermeneutics. Karl Mannheim and the Public Interpretation of Reality
The seminar will be dedicated to the sociology of knowledge of Karl Mannheim. Participants, together with the instructor, will present a close reading of Mannheim’s 1929 article on “Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon” and use it as a template for the analysis, diagnosis and critique of competing worldviews (ideologies and utopias) in times of political polarization.
Reading: Mannheim, K. (1952 [1929]): “Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon”, pp. 191-229 in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: RKP.

Professor Vandenberghe’s profile
Frédéric Vandenberghe is a professor of sociology at the Instituto de Filosofia e de Ciências Sociais (IFCS), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He has been a visiting professor at several institutions including Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and Max Weber Kolleg in Erfurt, École des Hautes en Sciences Sociales in Paris (2019 and 2022), and the Institut für Soziologie, Universität Innsbruck. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Hamburg.
His research interests include the history of social sciences (particularly critical theory, hermeneutics, and phenomenology) and epistemology and ontology (especially critical realism). Among his scholarly achievements are contributions to the sociology of culture and relational sociology, as well as to topics such as modernity, postmodernity, globalization, cosmopolitanism, social movements, collective identities, and global crisis.
He is the author of 11 monographs and over 100 articles; the recipient of 8 academic fellowships in Europe and Asia and 5 research grants, including one funded by the Templeton Foundation, Critical Realism Network, Yale University, USA. He is also a member of numerous research groups, including those in France (MAUSS [Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales]), Belgium (CRIDIS [Centre de Recherche Interdisciplinaire Développement, Institutions, Subjectivité], Université Catholique de Louvain), UK (IACR: International Association for Critical Realism, London), Germany (Georg Simmel Gesellschaft), Denmark (Transor Network – Research Network for Transdiciplinary Studies on Social Robotics), and the USA (CCS [Center for Cultural Sociology] and Critical Realism Network – Yale University, New Haven).
We cordially invite you to attend the talk and seminar!