I think this year's first year students have had one of the best lectures. I thought the speaker was engaging, interesting, and got his message across. It helps that everyone had read Mountains Beyond Mountains (or at least part of it) so they knew some of the background of Farmer's work. That allowed him to expand on some topics and tell stories. I've got to get myself a laser pen!
As a sociologist, of course, Farmer's work is very interesting. He speaks eloquently about the relationship between the structure of the society and the individual. We can think about the "personal troubles" of people facing serious life-threatening diseases, and the "public issues" of the way in which systemic poverty contributes to (and causes) those troubles. I like how he stressed the importance of understanding the historical facts about an issue--another point in Mills' sociological imagination.
I hope that the sociology students who attended were able to come away with some of the same impressions.
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