Public Sector Reading Group meeting

The Public Sector Reading Group is a reading/discussion group for PhD fellows and Post Docs with an interest in contemporary rethinking and restructuring of public services. We conceive of this topic very broadly to include substantive issues such as the involving public sector and new technologies of involvement, health governance, the constitution of failure regimes, public-private partnering, and so forth.We plan to meet once a month, probably the first Monday afternoon of the month. The meetings run from Marts-June and September-December 2012.The format will be that two individuals in the group also take responsibility for putting forward the arguments of the text (pros) and a case against the text (cons). We would then move into a general discussion. If possible, all texts are distributed by e-mail two weeks before the meeting. The readings will combine theory sessions with more grounded and public sector specific readings. Professor and Academic-Director of The Public-Private platform, Paul du Gay, will be chairing the sessions.   

Chair: Paul du Gay

Readings: Charles Perrow (1984), Complexity, coupling, and catastrophe, Chapter 3 in Normal Accidents, pp. 62-100; Liisa Kurunmäki and Peter Miller (2011) Democratising failure: the making of a calculative infrastructure for forgiving and forecasting failure.Empirical grounding: Failure regimes (health care, tax offices, military)