Associate Professor of Political Science, Darel Paul will give a Lecture
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Associate Professor of Political Science Darel Paul will give the second lecture in the Williams College Annual Faculty Lecture Series on Thursday February 19, at 4 p.m. in The Science Center's Wege Auditorium. His talk is titled "Beyond Tolerance: Capitalism, Culture, and the Politics of Gay Marriage." The public is invited and the talk is free. A reception will follow the talk."Growing support for same-sex marriage in the United States is ostensibly the product of an expanding social commitment to the principle of toleration," writes Paul. "Such an argument does little justice, however, to the cultural and material foundations of opinion and politics surrounding same-sex marriage."
In exploring a number of the questions raised - including why legal recognition of same-sex relationships is concentrated in the Northeast and the Pacific West and why same-sex marriage is popular with the professional class but not the working class? Paul says, "We must go beyond tolerance and put same-sex marriage in its cultural and material context, particularly as a product of recent transformations in American capitalism and the American family politically mediated through geography and class."
Paul is the author of "Rescaling International Political Economy: Subnational States and the Regulation of the Global Political Economy" and numerous articles, which have appeared in Urban Studies, Political Geography, Review of International Political Economy, and Review of International Studies. His research interests lie in the contemporary process of globalization, urbanization and commodity deflation in the global political economy.
Paul received his B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and his M.A from The George Washington University.
