Call for conference presentations: Local Resistance, Global Crisis: developing communities of solidarity and Left Politics for the 21st Century
Friday June 13th and Saturday 14th 2014, Renehan Hall, South Campus, National University of Maynooth

Keynote Speakers will include:

David Featherstone, Department of Geography, Glasgow. Author of Solidarity: Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism (2012) and, Resistance, Space and Political Identities: the Making of Counter-Global Networks (2008).

Costis Hadjimichalis, Department of Geography, Harokopio University, Athens. His research and publications have included uneven geographical development, socio-spatial justice and solidarity.

Conference themes

The global financial crisis and austerity has been met with significant protest and opposition from new social movements, radical Left political parties and single issue campaigns. However, the response has been uneven and divided across and within different countries and there remain many challenges in relation to developing strategies, alternatives and politics that can progress this opposition. 

This is a conference aimed at academics, community activists, trade unions, political activists, and NGOs, who are engaged in such campaigns and movements, for example in housing, austerity, unemployment, precariousness, regeneration, community campaigns, debt, natural resources, migrants’ rights, amongst others. The conference will provide a space to promote solidarity amongst diverse agendas, groups, organisations and politics to facilitate greater alliances and cooperation amongst those engaged in campaigns and politics to promote social and spatial justice, radical equality, democracy, and human rights. We welcome papers and presentations from practice or theoretical reflections fitting the themes including, but not limited to:

• Spaces of solidarity
• How can we progress solidarity, alliances and cooperation between us to support and enhance our individual campaigns and movements?
• How can we progress solidarity, alliances and cooperation between us to  influence the national, European and global policy and politics?
• The right to the city: local struggles, global solidarities seeking social and spatial justice
• New Left Political Parties: what potential for a socialism for the 21st Century?
• What role can new Left and radical Left political parties play in progressing a radical egalitarian, socialist politics?
• Social Movements & civil society: Where is the Irish resistance?
• Partnership with the state as a strategy to achieve social justice; Can such strategies be pursued without silencing or excluding more critical voices and disruptive protests?
• Reflections and contributions from critical urban and social theory on resistance and solidarity
• Lessons from communities and social movements engaging in campaigns and struggles in relation to community activism, housing, debt, natural resources, workers rights, migrants rights,  at a local, national and global scale
• Facilitated open discussion: possibilities and strategies for solidarity, community resistance and Left politics

Email title and short abstract (250 words) indicating which theme it fits under and whether it is a presentation or a poster to rory.hearne@nuim.ie before April 15th.

Register your interest email: rory.hearne@nuim.ie

We are working to keep registration costs as low as possible at this stage

Supported by: The Department of Geography NUIM , NIRSA, Network on Politics, Power and Society NUIM

New research published by NUI Maynooth researchers in Nature Climate Change shows that adaptation to climate change is likely to take place not as a smooth, planned process but as a series of crises which will cause major disruption as instant short-term solutions are sought.   The findings of the study could prove key to establishing how society changes to cope with more turbulent weather and more frequent mega storms.   Dr Conor Murphy and Prof John Sweeney of the Department of Geography and Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units (ICARUS), NUI Maynooth worked with colleagues at the University of Exeter and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, which also provided funding for the study.   

The team examined attitudes in Cumbria in north-west England and Galway in western Ireland, which were both hit by heavy flooding in November 2009.   The flooding of 2009 was devastating to both communities. Record rainfall was recorded in both countries, resulting in a number of deaths, properties being severely damaged and economic disruption.   The study, which was the first to track the impacts of floods across two countries, surveyed 356 residents in both areas eight months after the flooding and measured perceptions of governments’ performances in dealing with the aftermath, as well as perceptions of fairness in that response and the willingness of individuals to take action.  

 Researchers found that when people in both studies felt that government had fallen short of their expectations, the resulting perception of helplessness leads to an unwillingness to take personal action to prevent flooding in future.   Residents in Galway were significantly more likely to believe that their property would be flooded again than those in Cumbria. Yet it was Cumbrians who believed they had more personal responsibility to adapt to reduce future incidents.   The researchers found that issues of fairness, blame and liability are the dominant factors in determining the willingness of individuals to take action in the context of future risks. Given the high exposure of development in flood prone areas it is clear that both England and Ireland need to make major investments in building flood resilience with changing rainfall patterns induced by climate change.   The researchers concluded that to successfully adapt to climate change an implicit contract between citizens and government agencies needs to be considered, to enable fairer and smoother processes of adaptation.   The paper was published on 25th November 2012 as Adger, W. N., Quinn, T., Lorenzoni, I., Murphy, C. and Sweeney, J. (2012) Changing social contracts in climate change adaptation. Nature Climate Change 10.1038/nclimate1751.

NUI Maynooth today launched an innovative new Masters in ‘Transformative Community Development’.  The new Masters programme, established as part of the TEN-Hunger Project (Transformative Engagement Network), is funded by Irish Aid and the Higher Education Authority and will bring together over thirty academics across disciplines to focus on issues of climate change and food security in vulnerable communities in Zambia and Malawi.

As part of the TEN Hunger Project, NUI Maynooth has collaborated with the University of Mzuzu in Malawi, Mulungushi University and the Zambian Open University in Zambia to design a Masters programme that will enrol 36 students across the three universities.  These students comprise professionals in governmental and non-governmental agencies who work closely with vulnerable communities in Zambia and Malawi and have demonstrated a unique knowledge and understanding of the challenges posed by climate change to these people.

As climate change continues to threaten the livelihoods of rural communities in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, TEN-Hunger and its staff and students will seek to work with these communities to help transform their capacity to cope with the challenges of climate change, particularly around issues such as food security and nutrition.   

Speaking at the launch of the new Masters, NUI Maynooth Professor Anne Ryan said: “Building relationships between Universities and local communities allows the voices of the most vulnerable to feed into the research and teaching agendas of Universities, while the links to policy that Universities hold are critical to ensuring the wellbeing of communities.”

Dr. Bernie Grummell added that “For Irish Universities the benefit of such engagements is great. We can get a real sense of the experiences, strengths and needs of vulnerable communities and we can integrate these into our teaching and research.”

Dr. Conor Murphy highlighted that “Changes in rainfall are already having a devastating effect on farming practices. In many instances traditional coping strategies are ineffective while uptake of technology and alternative practices have been slow for many complex reasons.”

In addition, Professor Martin Downes commented that “The lessons we learn from these communities of remarkable survivors will be stored in a dedicated repository that will make them available to everyone to use in easing the effects of climate change.”

Project website: www.tenhunger.org

Putting preventative measures in place to deal with flooding is cheaper than dealing in a reactive way to the extreme weather that is going to become more frequent over the coming years, according to an Irish climate change scientist.Dr Conor Murphy, a director of the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units at NUI Maynooth, said that while the Office of Public Works was “very engaged” with the issue of climate change, it was not receiving sufficient attention at Government and local authority level.