Understanding Society
Cambridge University
Margaret Thatcher famously declared that there is no such thing as society. Her successor David Cameron has asserted that the concept of ‘The Big Society’ is a central plank of his administration’s agenda. Universities have found it easy to take a distanced view of the rhetoric of government, but the current Conservative government has also insisted that this concept of ‘The Big Society’ must determine a significant proportion of research funding. ‘Society’ is one of the most contested terms in modern thinking – though completely undefined in government policy! What then should we make of the command to think of ‘The Big Society’? Society can mean the widest delineaments of public community life or it can imply the most delimited arena of upper-class posing. Can we talk of society without talking of culture? Religion? Gender? Power? Class? Nationhood? Is society only a term of modern thinking? To answer these interrelated and vexing questions, we have invited a leading group of a