Join us on Thursday 15th October for the 4th installment of TASA's Social Theory Thematic Group Webinar Series, "Paradoxes of Hope and Ideology," which will be presented by Craig Browne.
This paper expands on the social diagnosis of the self-contradictory tendencies of contemporary capitalist modernity outlined in my recent book The Dialectic of Control: Sketch for a Critical Theory of Society (2026). It argues that many of these contradictions are manifest in the changing complexions of hope and ideology. Declining confidence in social progress originally contributed to social theory’s increasing interest in the category of hope. Hope appeared to offer a way of combining an orientation to the future with a normative commitment to transforming injustice. Yet hope is volatile and unstable. Discontent can find expression in other forms and the new millennium has seen a considerable renewal of ideologies assumed to have been spent, superseded or marginalised. Political ideologies have historically been a major mode of articulating social hope in modernity, however, contemporary reactionary and authoritarian ideologies appeal to a sense of decline and opposition to a changing moral order, implying some reallocation of hope. A deeper understanding of these developments can be achieved, I argue, by perceiving them in terms of struggles for autonomy and counter-resistance to progressive change that has shaped the arc of the contemporary period and the perverse contradictions of thwarted hopes and expectations.
Event Details:
Date: Thursday 15 October 2026
Time: 12:30pm - 1:30pm (AEST)
Format: Online
Webinar
Cost: complimentary
Your Speaker
Craig Browne: Craig Browne is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney. He is the author of The Dialectic of Control: Sketch for a Critical Theory of Society (Bristol University Press, 2026), Social Theory and the Political Imaginary: Practice, Critique and History (Routledge, 2024), Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity: A Constructive Comparison (Anthem, 2017), Critical Social Theory (Sage, 2017), and with Andrew Lynch, Taylor and Politics: A Critical Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2018). He co-edited Violence in France and Australia: Disorder in the Postcolonial Welfare State (Sydney University Press, 2011) and recently published ‘Critical Theory in Australia’ in Global Critical Theories, edited by Kozlarek and Leyva (Brill, 2025). He is working on the sequel to The Dialectic of Control and long-term research projects on the capitalist imaginary, creative democracy, and global modernity. His most recent publication is ‘Political Imaginaries and Ideological Metamorphoses’, International Journal of Social Imaginaries, 2026 5(2).