Laudato si’: A New Call for Catholic Social Action
Since his election in 2013, Pope Francis has been using the two Pontifical Academies (PAS for natural science and PASS for the social sciences) to explore topics of concern to him, such as climate change and human trafficking. In this lecture, Dr. Archer will examine the impact of this relationship between Pope Francis and the Academies. Members of the Academies have become more involved in the world, whether among the poorest whose livelihoods are being destroyed by increasing acidification of the seas or with those trafficked into forced labour, prostitution, and the harvesting of their vital organs. The climax of this engagement, though not the end of the story, was the UN’s designation of the new Sustainable Development Goals for 2015, in which the Church played a crucial role — as a social activist.
Margaret S. Archer
Margaret S. Archer was Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, 1979-2010. Her research is devoted to the problem of structure and agency, through which she developed her ‘morphogenetic approach’ to social theory. She has written over twenty books, including The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity (2012), Making our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility (2007), and Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (2003).
Dr. Archer was President of the International Sociological Association (1986-90); a founding member of FAcSS; the British Nominee for the Balzan Prize, 2013; and a founding member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, becoming its President in 2014.