Theology for liberation in the UK - call for papers

Modern Believing Call for Papers - Circulate Widely!

Theology for Liberation in the UK

You are invited to submit a paper for review and publication that explores the interaction of radical politics and Christian faith that takes seriously its British context and looks for actual concrete change for neighbourhoods.


Nothing vague or aspirational: Demonstrably Practical Theology, rooted in neighbourhoods or marginal communities.

Papers need to demonstrate an understanding of a particular context, show that analysis has taken place with (rather than over or for) people and that the analysis of lived experience is deeply reflected on with academically rigorous theology that’s presented in an accessible way.


Themes may include but are not exclusive to:


- The interaction of religions in ways that change society

- Anarchy as observed and interacted with by people of faith

- Queer theology and its role in social transformation

- Disability and challenging the changes to the social contract

- Direct Action and theological reflection


Due Date for Proposals: 1st March 2016

Due date for submission of paper and abstract: 1st July 2016


Contact:

Revd Dr Keith Hebden, Guest Editor for Modern Believing

Mail for more details and to submit a proposal.

Anarchist Studies Network Conference, 14-16 September 2016 Loughborough

Loughborough University, U.K. – 14-16 September 2016
Central theme: Anarcha-feminism
Call for Papers and Sessions
The global resistance faces turbulent times, as the balance of hope teeters between inspiring mobilisation and reactionary retrenchment. In Rojava, Kurdish communities are implementing libertarian socialism and feminist leadership on a scale unseen since the Spanish civil war, while world powers bomb the democratic Syrian opposition alongside ISIS. The mobilisation of African Americans against police brutality goes beyond liberal platitudes to highlight systemic racism, while competitors for the Republican candidacy outdo one another in barefaced bigotry and misogyny. And while anarchists were encouraged by the resurgence of popular protest in the wake of the global financial crisis, much of that energy has been absorbed by electoral initiatives from Greece and Spain to the UK and US, vindicating longstanding concerns about the co-optation of movements who expect too much of the state. In these uncertain days, the elaboration of anarchist analysis which bridges theory and practice and speaks to the needs of social movements assumes increasing importance.
The 4th International Conference of the Anarchist Studies Network will be held at Loughborough University between 14-16 September 2016. Proposals are welcome for individual papers, panels, and streams of several panels. We especially encourage panel proposals, to include 3-4 presentations drawn together around a common theme, although individual paper proposals are of course also welcome.
Contributions from both within and outside the official academic sphere are invited from any scholarly discipline(s), on any topic relevant to the study of anarchism.
The central theme for the conference is anarcha-feminism. The purposes are twofold: to stimulate discussion of a form of oppression that anarchists oppose but which continues to be felt in anarchist organising; and to welcome individuals, groups and communities who have not previously participated in ASN events. By recognising the legacy of anarcha-feminists/anarchist feminism and women's activism in anarchism we want to strengthen the ties between contemporary anarchists and feminists in the struggle against oppression and use the recognition of misogynist practices and hierarchical gender structures to open up the event to other marginalised peoples. We therefore particularly encourage submissions from women, trans and non-binary people, queer activists, collectives, people of colour, people with disabilities and we strongly encourage panel and panel stream organizers to overcome exclusion. We are also especially interested in presentations that are concerned with anarchism and one/more of the following:
· Anarcha-feminist and queer theory
· Anarcha-feminist critiques of the state
· Anarcha-feminist histories
· Ecofeminism, individualist anarcha-feminism, anarcho-primitivist feminism, posthuman, cyborg and sci-fi anarcho-feminism
· Feminist critiques of anarchism and anarchist engagement with feminism
· Intersections between gender, sexuality, race, class, abilities and anarchism
· Local anarcho-feminist struggles / experiences
· Love, sex, relationships (or resistance to)
· Masculine and feminine representations and the movement between them
· Sex work and reproductive rights
· The role of women and non-binary people in the struggle against capitalism
In addition, we welcome contributions on any other topic relevant to the study of anarchism, with or without connection to anarcha-feminism.
ASN conferences aim to breach new frontiers in anarchist scholarship, and encourage cross-pollination between disciplines. As well as submissions that bridge the gap between ‘academic’ and other forms of knowledge, we also welcome proposals for workshops, art events/performances and experimental pieces and are happy to discuss ideas that you might have.
Please send abstracts of up to 250 words per paper (multiply for panel/stream proposals) to ASN Co-convenor Uri Gordon at u.gordon@lboro.ac.uk by 14 March 2016

- Specifically, our readers are cordially invited to come up with ideas for a special spiritual/religious anarchism section, not necessarily connected to the main theme.
You may send your ideas to christianarchy at yahoo dot co dot uk

Critical time for Religious Studies, Stirling

Administrators are trying to shut down the entire Religious Studies department at Stirling University. 

This is significant for a number of reasons.

First, the religious studies department at Stirling is of particular import due to its emphasis on Critical Religion theories. In fact, Timothy Fitzgerald, one of the professors affected, is a prominent voice in that field. Critical Religion theories are important because they challenge the very colonialist basis upon which the study of "religion" is based.

The second reason is related to the first: Precisely because Critical Religion studies are a vitally needed, the shutting down of the entire department is an act of censorship that would damage not only the entire field of religious studies but also broader struggles against white supremacy and colonial domination. 

Third, this is significant because this type of sudden and arbitrary laying off of workers despite high student attendance— is exactly the type of business practice that we are all affected by and need to stick together to fight it. Despite a balanced budget and a healthy number of students, the administration offered four professors redundancy packages and plans to lay off the rest of the instructors. This type of brutal cutthroat practices cannot be accepted. 

What to do?

You can sign (and spread!) the petition:

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/keep-religion-programme-at-stirling-university

(Already 1,000 signatures in a few days!)

Read more about Critical Religion studies at Stirling:

http://criticalreligion.org

 

Further reading:

here.

Conference on Dorothy Day

A conference that will examine both the person and the teachings of Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day will be held at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX, at the end of October

Keith Hebden speaking at Occupy Democracy, 17th of October 2014

IS and The Kurdish Revolution: Ideas on the Ground!

While IS continue to gain ground in the Middle East it is vital that we all get our heads around who the Kurds are, where they came from, and what they aspire to. Humanity's future is tied up in theirs and they map possibilities we can learn from. 

Political maps have a horrid habit of dividing people for the sake of governing over them. Or as a flat-mate of mine used to say "Borders are imaginary lines separating one group of people's imaginary rights from those of another". 

The Kurdish ethnic communities, Indo-European in descent and speaking various languages; Iranian, by and large but represented in bordering Iraq, Syria and Turkey are a classic example of the top-down statist nastiness that is 'border control'. And by 'border control' I mean the control of peoples using borders. 

A Brief Dystory* of the Kurdish People

As an ethnic group the Kurdish people are a huge melting pot, forming as a people in a place that is such an important geographical axis in world history. It makes them rich in legend, culture, language and diversity. but also disparate and subject to oppression by their many neighbours and - not having a state to represent them - ignored, by and large, by world powers. 

Kurdistan, as an entity, came into its own in the medieval period as a series of related but autonomous emirates organised under a shah. In the sixteenth century the Ottoman empire put and end to this with their occupation and centralisation of power, leading to the first organised Kurdish resistance and fight for self-rule, leading to a fully-formed Kurdish nationalism after World War 1 as the western powers carved up the map for their own greedy gain. So a conspiracy of Turkish, Iraqi, British and other European agencies have all but put an end to Kurdish hopes of a nation state to call home - free from persecution; safe from within their borders: their own 'Holy Land' as it were. 

Iraq and the KRG

There is, today (since 2006) a Kurdish regional government in Iraq (KRG) with its own Prime Minister, flag, and so on. But the majority of Kurds are resident of Turkey. 

Syria and the YPG

The "People's Protection Units" (YPG) are a stateless militia operating in Syria to protect Syrian Kurds from attack with the city of Kobane (a.k.a Ayn al-Arab) in norther Syria being a particular flashpoint and strategic area in the concept of a Kurdish Syria. 

Turkey and the PKK

The "Kurdish Workers Party" (PKK) founded way back in 1978, is another armed struggle of resistance against state repression of Kurds: this time in Turkey. The PKK was founded by Abdullah Öcalan "Apo" and is, according to NATO, a terrorist organisation. However, since the PKK are not known to attack unarmed civilians and are busy resisting IS, international politicos may change their mind on this. 

Apo was a Leninist organisation at first but has abandoned this agenda for a fluid and contextual form of anarchism, influenced greatly by Mikhail Bakunin and by Murray Bookchin: "Democratic Confederalism". 

Today, amidst the chaos of the middle east conflict, aided and abetted by a confused and avaricious Saudi-Western oil pact, the PKK are on the move and on the grow, These are, of course, precarious and unstable times. 

Roarmag puts it like this: "The Kurdish struggle, however, is anything but narrowly nationalistic. In the mountains above Erbil, in the ancient heartland of Kurdistan winding across the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, a social revolution has been born." 

The PKK have taken to this Democratic Confederalism and their ecologically-minded and feminist egalitarianism is capturing the imaginations of Kurdish people in Turkey. 

Like any organisation there is a shadowy side and many unanswered questions. The PKK is committed to violence as a means to a just end and inevitably this leads to internal contradictions between liberty and authoritarianism. 

But what they demonstrate - and this is the exciting bit - is that people can have and do want stateless autonomy. We saw it in Spain in the 1930s and in Korea in the early 20th Century. In both cases it wasn't the unworkability of anarchism that destroyed it but the insatiability of the state from without, imposing its "protection" on otherwise self-organising people. 

You won't read much about the PKK, or the YPG in the mainstream press - the revolution will be relativised rather than televised - but keep your radical ear to the ground because change and resistance doesn't mean rockets from drones or 'boots on the ground' it means power from the people building a new world in the shell of the old. 

HT: @RevdRay and @AnotherGreen

*Dystory - A History of how it all went wrong! 

Enlightened Anarchism: An International Conference at Lapland University

Enlightened Anarchism: An International Conference at Lapland University

Sept 11-14, 2014, Lapin Yliopisto, LS 10

 

Organized by:

Ms. Ali Jones, CIMO Fellow, Cambridge University

Dr. Mika Luoma-aho, Lapland University

Anarchism has recently become a topic of scholarly focus, as social and political movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring emerge throughout the world. While traditional public opinion tends to view anarchism as juvenile force of negation, violence or gleeful destruction, it is nonetheless possible to examine a far more nuanced discourse, as espoused by the social actors involved. In fact, many such groups are particularly focused upon combatting fascism, perceived state corruption, the effects of neoliberalism or globalization, or to dedicating themselves to fighting for environmental protection, immigrant and refugee rights, or in other arena of social justice. Many of these aims could be interpreted as not only in the public interest, but also to constitute some of the cornerstones of democracy itself. In fact, in 2007 Saul Newman wrote that "the ideological terrain appears to have shifted to such an extent that to be radical these days is precisely to insist on things like the rule of law and protection of civil liberties and human rights." Indeed, despite the traditional perceptions of anarchy predominant in Finnish academia, it is in fact possible to view these social movements as composed of highly engaged, and even faithful, public citizens, which begs the question of why they are ostracized and considered to be so politically threatening. It further causes one to re-examine democracy and Anarchism categorically and philosophically.

The upcoming Enlightened Anarchism conference seeks to initiate this important conversation within the Finnish Academy. It is organized in organized in cooperation with Cambridge University, with financial support from the Lapland Faculty of Social Sciences. This major international event will host 25 speakers from around the world, including two outstanding keynotes: Dr. George Katsiaficas, Wentworth Institute of Technology and Dr. Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Loughborough University, in addition to Special Guest Speaker Dimitrios Roussopoulous. Biographies of each speaker can be found online, along with the schedule of talks, at http://enlightenedanarchism.wordpress.com/. 

All events are free and open to the public, and we encourage students to attend and participate. Auditors should contact Ms. Ali Jones at ajones@ulapland.fi for registration details. Students seeking credit for participation should contact Dr. Mika Luoma-aho at mika.luoma-aho@ulapland.fi.

Enlightened Anarchism

September 11-14, 2014

Lapland University, in cooperation with Cambridge University

Location: Lapin Yliopisto, Room LS10, Rovaniemi Finland

 

Keynote Speakers:

George Katsiaficas

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos

 

Special Guest Speaker:

Dimitrios Roussopoulos

Friday September 12^th

8:30-9:15                     Registration, Coffee, warm snacks and pastries

9:15-9:30                     Welcoming Remarks, Ali Jones

9:30- 11:00                  Non-Western Anarchisms

Chair: Dimitri Roussopoulos

Tiina Seppälä, University of Lapland - Anarchism, Resistance & Social Movements: Critical Perspectives from South Asia

Enrique Galvan-Alvarez, International University of La Rioja - Revolutionary Mercy? The Western Buddhist Anarchist Tradition

James Jackson, Unaffiliated – Rebel Music

11:00-11:15                Break

11:15 - 13:15               Capitalism and the State

Chair: Julian Reid

Blair Taylor, New School for Social Research- New Spirit of Capitalism, New Spirit of the Left: Neoanarchism from the Alterglobalization Movement to Occupy Wall Street

Nina Rismal, Cambridge University - Critical Theory and the Question of Violence: The 1968 Students Protests

Brandon Wallace, New School for Social Research - Anarchism and the Legitimation of Authority

Joshua Anderson, Saint Louis University – Against the Nation-State: On the normative poverty of statism

13:15-14:00                 Lunch (University Cafeteria)

14:00- 15:30                 Anarchism and International Relations

Chair: Mika Luoma-aho

Michael Kilburn, Endicott College – Anarchism and Human Rights

Jan Hanska, Finnish Defense Research Institute – SERIOUSLY LUDICROUS:

The “ridico-anarchic” nature of the politics of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army

Guido Verstraeten, Satakunta University of Applied Sciences- Eco-Regionalism, an Alternative for Democratic Anarchistic Refuges.

15:30-16:00                 Break (Coffee and warm snacks provided)

16:00– 18:00               George Katsiaficas Keynote, The Grammar of Insurgency

18:15                            Board Bus at University to Forest Cookout.

(Food will be provided.  Please bring drinks, warm clothes, and rain coats as appropriate)

  

Saturday September 13^th

9:00-9:30                     Coffee, warm snacks and pastries

9:30- 11:00                  Anarchisms in German Thought and Praxis

Chair: George Katsiaficas

 

Anatole Lucet, École normale supérieure de Lyon - Spirit and community: Gustav Landauer’s criticisms of materialism and violence.

Katharina Karcher, University of Warwick and Cambridge University – The Red Zora: Anarchist Feminist Counter-violence in the Federal Republic of Germany 

Ali Jones, Cambridge University – Henri Lefebvre and German Autonomie

11:00-11:15                 Break

 

11:15-13:15                 Freedom, Ethics and the Spirit of Rebellion

Chair: Suvi Alt

 

Aylon Assael Cohen, Oxford University - The Insurrection of Feelings and the Feelings for Insurrection

Mari Kuukkanen, University of Helsinki - Prefigurative politics or counter-conduct?

Victor Castro, Universidad de Granada – Paradox of Ends and Means

Iwona Janicka, Cambridge University – Is There an Anarchist in this Closet? Understanding Contemporary Anarchism with Judith Butler and Peter Sloterdijk

13:15- 14:00                Lunch (University Cafeteria)

14:00- 15:30                Space and the Spatial Turn

Chair: Ali Jones

Mika Luoma-aho, Lapland University - Metaethics of Scale

Rui Coelho, University of Lisbon - Anarcho-Monks: Is Neomonasticism part of the “New Anarchist” wave?

Christian Pfenninger, University of Westminster – Porous Sovereignties

15:30-15:45                 Break

15:45- 17:15                Anarchism and Christian Theology

Chair: Alexandre Christoyannopoulos

Anthony Fiscella, Lund University - Two Christianities: “Communal” and “Imperial” Variations - Responsibilities and Relevancies for Researchers

Lara Apps, University of Alberta, No Gods, No Masters? Anarchic Optimism in Eighteenth-Century French Atheism

Justin Meggitt, Cambridge University - Anarchism and Apocalypse: The historical Jesus and the problem of violence deferred

17:15-18:00                 Break (coffee and warm snacks provided)

18:00- 20:00                Alexandre Christoyannopoulos Keynote, Leo Tolstoy’s Anticlericalism

20:00                           University Sauna.

(Drinks and snacks will be provided. Meals can be ordered).

Sunday September 14^th

Location: University Sauna Meeting Room

10:00-11:00                  Roundtable Discussion (Coffee, snacks, pastries provided)

Dennis Fox, Emeritus, University of Illinois at Springfield - Anarchist Morality and Personal Change

 

11:00-13:00                 Dimitrios Roussopoulos Special Guest Speaker,

Constructive Anarchism – Social Ecology and Democracy

13:00                           Conference Conclusion.