Timetable below:
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Programme ‘Utopian Values’
Saturday 23rd February 2008
Venue: The Staff Club, University Park, (Main Campus) Nottingham University
8.30 Onwards coffee will be available in the Upstairs Lounge
9-10am: Introductions and Welcome: Utopian Values (Upstairs Lounge)
Lucy Sargisson and Ruth Levitas
10.00-11.15 Panel One - Realizing Utopian Values I: Lessons from Experience (Upstairs Lounge)
This panel will explore a range of different attempts to realize utopian values, seeking to explore the lessons to be drawn from experience and practical experimentation.
John Blewitt (Exeter, Education) ‘Not leaving the party early: practical utopia as diversity and resilience’
Mike Hannis (Keele) ‘Utopia from the Bottom Up? DIY eco-settlements and UK land-use planning’
Chris Coates (Diggers and Dreamers) ‘Intentional Communities as Temporary Autonomous Zones’
11.15-11.30 Refreshments (Upstairs Lounge)
After coffee we will split into two parallel sessions and panels two and three will run simultaneously:
11.30-1.00 Parallel Sessions Two and Three
Panel Two: Realizing Utopian Values: II
Panel Three: Values in Theory and Practice
11.30-1.00 Panel Two: Realizing Utopian Values: II(Upstairs Lounge)
In this final panel we focus on realizing utopian values. Some of these papers seek to offer prescriptions about how we might build a better world and some draw lessons from lived experiments.
Jim Arnold (New Lanark) ‘Rebuilding and Living in New Lanark’
Mark Barrett (People In Common and
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Stevphen Shukaitis, (Autonomedia & University of London, Queen Mary) 'Utopian Practices & Value Struggles: Between Self-Organization and Self-Valorization' 15mins
Tony Burns (Nottingham, Politics) 'Utopian Values and the Politics of Recognition
in the Thought of Alasdair MacIntyre: Practices Versus Institutions.'
11.30-1.00 Panel Three: Values in Theory and Practice (Conference Suite)
This panel explores the difficulties of bringing together theory and practice by attempting to theorize utopian practices.
Mark Wenman (Politics, Nottingham) ‘The Realisation of Global Justice’
Andrew Robinson (Nottingham, Politics) ‘Utopias without transcendence? Post-left anarchy, immediacy and utopian energy’
Gulshan Ara Khan (Nottingham, Politics) ‘‘Post-modern’ Utopian Values and the Problem of the Universal’
1.00-2.00 Lunch. (Downstairs Lounge)
After lunch we will split into two parallel sessions and panels four and five will run consecutively.
2.00-3.30 Panel Four: Environment, Value and Utopia? (Conference Suite)
This panel explores some of the very different ways that the environment has an impact on ideas about the good life, exploring values drawn from ‘nature’, attempts to live an environmentalist life, and the knowledge of indigenous peoples, which is connected (by some) to bio-culture.
Lisa Garforth (Leeds, Sociology & Social Policy) ‘Carbon footprinting and the mainstreaming/internalisation of certain kinds of green values via consumption’
Aurora Trujillo (Reading) ‘Justice and the Structural Oppression of Environmentalists within Mainstream Society’
Nina Moeller (Lancaster, Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics) ‘Collective Bio-Cultural Heritage as Utopian Value?’
2.00-3.30 Panel Five: Educating and Organizing for Utopia (Upstairs Lounge)
Historically, some people’s answer to the question ‘How can we make the world a better place?’ has been ‘through organization and education’. This panel explores several different attempts to educate and organize for a better world.
Lorna Davidson (New Lanark Community) ‘New Lanark in Owen's time’
John Wallis (Nottingham, Education) ‘Radical Education and Social Change’
Chrissie Rogers (Keele, Education) ''Inclusive' education for all: Utopia or Dystopia'
Martin Parker (Leicester, Management) ‘Management, Organization and Utopia’
3.30 Refreshments (Upstairs Lounge)
3.45-4.15pm: Plenary Discussion and Feedback: Utopian Values (Upstairs Lounge)