Silvia Rief
Harvard University / University of Innsbruck
When: Monday, February 5, 2018, 12:30
Where: Seminar Room, International Center
The relationship between democracy and consumer capitalism has been debated widely, in particularly regarding the question whether (mass) consumption and the increase in living standards foster, sustain or pervert democratic development. Another question to ask is what place consumption can and should have in the contours of democratic societies and how controversies around consumption can be resolved in democratic ways.
Dr. Silvia Rief received her doctorate in sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Innsbruck and currently Schumpeter Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard. Her recent research focuses on consumption at the intersection of cultural and economic sociology, and on technologies of everyday life and social practices. She is currently working on a project on consumption and material provision in economic and social thought and in relation to theories of democracy.
