Theology and Social Activism
The University of Manchester, Saturday 28th March 2015
For the day schedule, please click here.
Keynote Speaker: Steven Timms, MP
Keynote Speaker: Sophie Stephens, London Citizens
Keynote Speaker: Jane Wills, Queen Mary, London
Keynote Speaker: Adrian Pabst, University of Kent
Where are ‘the people’ in contemporary British Politics?
What’s the place of the people in the production of the theo-political?
What vehicles mediate the demands of the people?
With workshops on Interfaith, Environmental Politics, and the Future of Volunteerism featuring Niall Cooper, Haifaa Jawad, Marigold Bentley and Keiran Turner-Dave. Info here.
For the day schedule, please click here.
Keynote Speaker: Steven Timms, MP
Keynote Speaker: Sophie Stephens, London Citizens
Keynote Speaker: Jane Wills, Queen Mary, London
Keynote Speaker: Adrian Pabst, University of Kent
Where are ‘the people’ in contemporary British Politics?
What’s the place of the people in the production of the theo-political?
What vehicles mediate the demands of the people?
With workshops on Interfaith, Environmental Politics, and the Future of Volunteerism featuring Niall Cooper, Haifaa Jawad, Marigold Bentley and Keiran Turner-Dave. Info here.
By bringing together activists, academics, leaders of Faith Based Organisations and NGOs, charities and religious institutions, political commentators and the people, this conference wants to contribute to our understanding of community engagement – and the place of the people in the political more widely – by asking: what is the relationship between religions, theologies and the political in this resurgence of social activism? Alienated by the ‘Westminster Bubble’ and the ‘Ivory Tower’, could community engagement be the vehicle by which power is given back to the people?
In the last thirty years civil society has assumed a significant place in political rhetoric, theory, and practice on both sides of the Atlantic. The Coalition’s ‘Big Society’ is the most recent example of a trend for the third sector that began with Margret Thatcher and accelerated with Blair.
Community engagement thus sits at the intersection of a nexus of issues in twentieth and twenty-first century thought, envisioning, as it does, the re-imagining of an egalitarian civil society and the reform of politics in favor of the poor. As such, a number of methods to foster community engagement have been proposed, for example; community organizing (Alinsky); communication and access (Habermas); the voice of the subaltern (Spivak); agency and education (Friere). Community engagement seeks to bring together individuals, families and institutions, people that have not been heard, to hold local and national power to account through the development of permanent ‘peoples’ organisations. Through the utilisation of mutual self-interest communities could assert their own power and place in contemporary politics.
For registration (inc. one day rates) please click here.
In the last thirty years civil society has assumed a significant place in political rhetoric, theory, and practice on both sides of the Atlantic. The Coalition’s ‘Big Society’ is the most recent example of a trend for the third sector that began with Margret Thatcher and accelerated with Blair.
Community engagement thus sits at the intersection of a nexus of issues in twentieth and twenty-first century thought, envisioning, as it does, the re-imagining of an egalitarian civil society and the reform of politics in favor of the poor. As such, a number of methods to foster community engagement have been proposed, for example; community organizing (Alinsky); communication and access (Habermas); the voice of the subaltern (Spivak); agency and education (Friere). Community engagement seeks to bring together individuals, families and institutions, people that have not been heard, to hold local and national power to account through the development of permanent ‘peoples’ organisations. Through the utilisation of mutual self-interest communities could assert their own power and place in contemporary politics.
For registration (inc. one day rates) please click here.