invites everybody to the twelfth of its interdisciplinary seminars in the series "Foundations". In this series CLEA invites scholars that are actively engaged in the research on the foundations of a particular discipline. Their lectures will always be directed
to an interdisciplinary audience, and the discussions aim at confronting
the foundations of the different disciplines.
(Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Universiteit Utrecht)
Tuesday, November 12 at 5 p.m. in room C403 (buildingC, 5th floor)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Campus Oefenplein.
Globalization is not only an economic and/or a political tendency, it is also a concept used in (some subdisciplines of) the social sciences. My thesis is at the same time very simple and radical: according to the adopted worldviews different aspects of globalization are highlighted and other ones are neglected. This thesis holds as well for globalization seen as a real tendency or for globalization as a concept of analysis. A consequence of this thesis is that when considering the underlying worldviews one can point to possible alternatives by giving attention to the neglected aspects.
About the speaker:
Robert Maier was born in Bratislava and holds the Austrian nationality. He studied sociology, psychology and mathematics at the University of Geneva, from 1963 on. He made his doctoral thesis on "Le dévelopment des anticipations chez l' enfant" (1971), and was research assistant of Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva and at the International Center of Genetic Epistemology. He has also been lecturer at the University of Zürich and research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1974 on he is senior lecturer and assistant professor at the University of Utrecht, first in developmental psychology, later in general social sciences.
The presentation with questions will last about an hour. Afterwards, an hour or more is reserved for an in-depth, group discussion of the topic.
More info at the CLEA office: phone 02-644 26 77 (afternoon) or via the Web-page: http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/CLEA/