Next Session of the International Sociological Debates The dark side of democracy: nation, nationalism and identity of the "people"

"The dark side of democracy: nation, nationalism and identity of the "people"
by Professor Ivor Chipkin (Public Affairs Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand)
 
Drawing on the South African experience this presentation will explore the multiple political responses to democracy's most basic question: identifying the 'people' in whose name power is ostensibly vested. I will argue that democratic movements, when they animate the figure of the people, bring into play potentially contradictory tendencies; including tendencies that subvert the very promise of democracy itself.
 
About Prof. Ivor Chipkin: He completed his PhD at the Ecole Normale Superieure in France and was based at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) between 2001 and 2004. He received an Oppenheimer fellowship in 2005 and took up a position at St Anthony’s college at the University of Oxford. He spent 4 years in the Democracy and Governance Programme at the Human Sciences Research Council where he acquired an intimate knowledge of government departments and agencies. In 2007 he published Do South Africans Exist? Nationalism, Democracy and the Identity of ‘the People’ with Wits University Press. Ivor has also published widely on questions of government and governance in South Africa. He has also written widely on questions of government, governance and the State. He is currently finishing a new book on the history of public sector reform in South Africa and its consequences for development and democracy.
 
Where?: Aula Magna, Facultat d’Economía i Empresa – Universitat de Barcelona.
When?: Wednesday, december 11, 2013
At what time?: 17:00 h.