Pluralism, Democracy, and Justice Research Group

We’re back with a new interview in our Meet the Researchers of Good Integration (GOODINT) series. This time, we meet Prof. Serena Parekh from Northeastern University in Boston. She is an expert on the ethics of refugees and displaced persons.

Meet the Researchers | UiT In this series of informal interviews we are going to introduce the main research group of Goodint.

Politics, Populism, and Affects | UiT The 2024 Tromsø Conference in Ethics and Political Philosophy aims to bring together political theorists with scholars working on affects/emotions in various fields, ranging from democratic theory to phenomenology and feminist theory. To what extent can work on emotions, affects and topics such as...

Here is some information about the upcoming conference at Leuven organized jointly by RIPPLE Migration Project and Good Integration GOODINT.

Learn more about:
RIPPLE Migration Project: https://hiw.kuleuven.be/ripple/research/justice-migration
GOODINT: https://en.uit.no/project/goodint

Tromsø Conference in Ethics and Political Philosophy: Politics, populism, and affects, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, 12.-13.12.2024

Keynote: Alan Finlayson (University of East Anglia)

This year’s Tromsø Conference in Ethics and Political Philosophy aims to bring together political theorists with scholars working on affects/emotions in various fields. We are especially interested in
how these areas of work can be bridged fruitfully and how work on affects and affective justice might contribute to or supplement theories of democratic and social equality and/ or populism and lead to a deeper understanding of the issues that span work on these topics. Today, affects and emotions draw a lot of attention across the humanities. In cultural studies, affect theory in the tradition of scholars such as Eve Sedgwick, Sara Ahmed and Laurent Berlant has long been influential, drawing our attention to the fundamental relation between affects and power, the social origin of emotions, their circulation among people and their political and social effects. Concepts such as “affective labor” and “emotional labor” have provided a lens through which to describe and analyze how the production and management of feelingsin self and othersis distributed (unequally) in society and across groups. More recently, Shilol Whitney and others have highlighted “affective harm” and “affective injustice” as specific forms of harm and injustice that are inherently affective in nature.

At the same time, affects and emotions have also entered discussions in political theory concerning topics such as justice, democracy, populism, and their accompanying dynamics. In Chantal Mouffe’s recent work analyzes how all politics is affective, and how populist parties are using affects like resentment and xenophobia (right populism) or hope and solidarity (left populism) to pursue specific strategies. Similarly, political theorists like Martha Nussbaum and Sara Protasi warn that emotions like fear, envy, and resentment have been neglected in political theory, even though they play a critical role in racial tensions and divides – and thus are easily exploited by populist leaders. Similar concerns arise
in the work around democratic and social equality with Martin Hartmann highlighting the need to include an understanding of the emotional impact of social inequality into relational theories of
democratic equality and Joseph Vogl and Alan Finlayson analyzing the power of affects in modern finance capitalism and their effect on democracy – Vogl with a focus on ressentiment, Finlayson with a
focus on affect and rhetoric.

The conference aims to bridge these various approaches to the political and social dimensions of affects and emotions and the role they can, should, and do play in populism, democracy, and debates about justice. Questions the conference will address include, but are not limited to, the following:

• When are affects productive or destructive in different spheres of the political arena?

• What is the role of affects and emotions in populism and/or democracy?

• Can focusing on affects help us distinguish between or evaluate different kinds of populism, i.e.,
left and right populism, democratic/non-democratic populism?

• How might notions such as emotional labor, affective injustice, or imaginary equality help us
understand the political and social challenges we face today?

• What theoretical frameworks are best for evaluating the function of affects in political life?

• How might socially (re)produced affects structure intergroup relations and identities?

• How do affects work to uphold and perpetuate structures of domination and marginalization?

• What are the possible connections between affect(s) and political resistance? How can affects
have emancipatory or progressive potential?

• What role do and/or should affects play in framing specific socio-political topics such as
immigration, gender equality and diversity, or distributive justice in the analytic tradition?

As the organizing team (Kaja Jenssen Rathe, Vegard Stensen, Jonas Jakobsen, Kerstin Reibold), we welcome abstracts on any of these questions as well as related issues. We hope for a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches ranging from political and democratic theory over decolonial, feminist, and critical theory to phenomenology. Please send a 300 word abstract to Vegard Stensen ([email protected]) by September 15th, 2024. You can expect a decision on your abstract by October 15th, 2024.

Instituttleder ved Institutt for filosofi og førstesemesterstudier (261584) | UiT Norges arktiske universitet Stillingstittel: Instituttleder ved Institutt for filosofi og førstesemesterstudier (261584), Arbeidsgiver: UiT Norges arktiske universitet, Søknadsfrist: søndag 5. mai 2024

Two interesting workshops next week:
Political Theory of LGBTQ+ Refuge and Migration (Bergen 12.-13.3.) &
Trust and Integration of Immigrants (Oxford 14.-15.3.).

(co-organized by the GoodInt research project, RCN 2021-26)

Movement exercises, cooking, home, immigration, and philosophy! Learn how it all connects in this next Meet the Reaserchers interview, with Dr. Sarah Fine. She is a specialist in immigration, nationalism and patriotism, and ‘race’ and ethnicity. Here we talk about her thoughts on the Goodint Project, as well as her recent experience with organizing a unique Goodint Workshop in Cambridge.

Meet the Researchers | UiT In this series of informal interviews we are going to introduce the main research group of Goodint.

‘Making Home: Migration, Culture, and Integration’ workshop was held at the wonderful surroundings of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 18.-19.12.2023. Participants enjoyed two days of interesting discussions, academic lectures, arts performances, a visit to the Black Atlantic exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, as well as a two-hour Movement workshop aiming to discuss issues of ‘home’, ‘safety’, and ‘grief’ with the help of body movement and contact with both one’s inner self and other participants. In the photo, some of the participants gathered for drinks at the Old Combination Room (OCR), Corpus Christi College.

Next GOODINT workshop "Making Home: Migration, Culture, and Integration" will be held at Corpus Christi, Cambridge 18th-19th December, with a healthy mix of both academic presentations and visits, visitors, and workshop contributions from non-academic actors, including artists and migrant organizations.

Meet the Researchers series is back! Andreas Føllesdal meets with us to talk about Goodint Project and the meaning of good integration.

Meet the Researchers | UiT In this series of informal interviews we are going to introduce the main research group of Goodint.