Podcast

Green Templeton Lectures 2014: The Tyranny of the Normal

Oxford University

Is normality - or conformity to certain parameters of behaviour and appearance - a necessary condition of all advanced societies or a tyranny which constrains individual aspiration and social evolution? Do conceptions of normality have any objective basis or are they merely social constructions, inexorably tied to the exercise of political and economic power? These questions have troubled some of the influential minds of the last two centuries but are …