A guest lecture “Society and Nature: The evolution of theoretical concepts ” was organized and held with the assistance of BIOM environmental movement and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on February 8, 2016 at BAFE.

Irina Albertovna Khalii, guest lecturer from Moscow, is a Doctor of Social Sciences at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has conducted the lecture for BAFE undergraduates, students and invited guests.

The lecture covered the following topics:

Local community as one of the main objects of sociology, from Weber and the Chicago School; local communities – research focus: a study of social movements, life of the communities in the localities, activist approach of A. Touraine; approval of globalization and neo-liberalism – the concept of “glocalization” (the second half of the 1990s – early 2000s.); opponents – sociologists of Eastern Europe, India, Vietnam; return to the locality: the global poor; sustainable development goals of the United Nations: what to do with the poor or how to reallocate capital flows etc.

Besides the above mentioned aspects, Irina Albertovna Khalii told about the risks of sustainable development – economic development along with environmental effects which is compulsory; a change of government / elite as the possibility of changing strategies; how to form a body actors in environmentally oriented sustainable development (obvious lack of staff); mobilizing groups (social class / layer) support and its constant expansion as well as the consolidation of the counter-group (focused only on economic development).

At the conclusion of lectures, graduate students and invited guests asked questions and had a small discussion on the lecture topics.