"It is reasonable to see many dangers in the years towards 2000, but it is also reasonable to see many grounds for hope." -- Raymond Williams (1983): Towards 2000 The Work of Raymond Williams Jim McGuigan CAMRI Seminar Wed, October 15, 2014 14:00-16:00 Univ. of Westminster Harrow Campus Room A7.01 Registration: per e-mail to [email protected] until Oct 13 http://www.westminster.ac.uk/camri/research-seminars/the-work-of-raymond-wil... In "Towards 2000", Raymond Williams took a look back at the 20th century and a look forward at possible futures in the 21st century, discussing aspects of society, culture, the media, politics, labour, democracy, technology, class, and warfare. Above all, "Towards 2000" is guided by a quest for socialism. In the CAMRI seminar on October 15th, Jim McGuigan - one of the leading Raymond Williams experts - will talk about the forthcoming re-publication of "Towards 2000" (2014) that he edited, the collected volume "Raymond Williams on Culture & Society: Essential Writings" (2013) that he also edited, as well as the relevance of Raymond Williams' works today. In this session, Jim McGuigan will survey Williams’s work and its enduring relevance to media and cultural analysis and why Williams’ 1983 book was mistakenly entitled 'Towards 2000', since it is as fresh and relevant to understanding the world now as it was when originally published. Jim has recently edited a collection of writings for Sage selected from the whole of Raymond Williams’s career, 'Raymond Williams on Culture and Society'. He has also edited and added to Williams’s 'Towards 2000', originally published in 1983, to be republished this year with the new title, 'A Short Counter-Revolution – Towards 2000 Revisited', also by Sage. Jim has also written several critical appreciations of Williams’s work, some of which have appeared in recent issues of 'Keywords', the journal of the Raymond Williams Society, and 'The Sociological Review'. His previous book publications include 'Cultural Populism' (1992), 'Culture and the Public Sphere' (1996), 'Modernity and Postmodern Culture' (1999, 2006), 'Rethinking Cultural Policy' (2004), 'Cool Capitalism' (2009) and 'Cultural Analysis' (2010). He is currently writing a book for Palgrave Macmillan to be entitled, 'Neoliberal Culture'.