Aspects of the Omnicrisis
Saturday 28th January, 1.00 pm - 5.00 pm
The Arthur Sullivan Room, Birmingham Midland Institute, 9 Margaret Street, Birmingham B3 3BU
Tickets £15 available at the event (cash only) or via EventBrite
National interest and global order - which comes first?
1.15 pm - 2.45 pm
The war in Ukraine has not undermined supranational institutions which still have the support of the most powerful world leaders. Going it alone doesn’t look like an attractive option. NATO seems to be stronger than ever in most of Europe where many feel threatened by Russia. When British Prime Minister Truss tried to follow a new economic policy, she was soon forced to resign after the IMF commented negatively. When her successor Sunak suggested that he had better things to do than attend the COP27 climate conference such was the criticism, he quickly changed his mind.
Dr Philip Cunliffe, Associate Professor in International Relations, University College London; author, The New Twenty Years’ Crisis 1999-2019: A critique of international relations; co-host, @Bungacast podcast
Dave Aveston
Break: tea/coffee (included in ticket price) 2.45 - 3.15 pm
Reparations, industrial revolution: how should poor nations develop in the 21st century?
3.15 pm - 4.45 pm
Clearly this dream has not been realised; if anything the trend has been in the opposite direction. The Covid pandemic and responses to it is part of the reason for this. Previous explanations for uneven development have ranged from crudely racist ones, cultural and geographical factors, naked exploitation and the exigencies of cold war politics. Behind even the most despicable of these explanations, however, there always lay an understanding that, at least in principle, the poor world ought to be allowed to catch up and that worldwide industrial development of the kind seen in the West would be in the interests of humanity as a whole. But this thinking has changed. At COP27 it was clear that the industrial revolution is now viewed as the first step on the path to the climate emergency.
Do climate change and other environmental impacts of industrial development mean we have come up against a natural barrier beyond which it is no longer possible to go? Is it now necessary to restrain growth in order to avoid destroying the planet, and what will that mean for billions of people in conditions of extreme poverty? Should they not enjoy the high standards of living modern society has shown are possible? Are Western environmentalist ideals just another form of colonialism or do they offer a different pathway, learning from previous mistakes and sparing people from catastrophe? Could loss and damage payments from the rich countries be part of a better route to development or are they tokenistic in the bigger scheme of changes that poor countries need?
Speakers:
Austin Williams, Senior Lecturer in Architecture, Kingston School of Art; author China's Urban Revolution:Understanding Chinese Eco-cities
John Vogler, Professorial Research Fellow in International Relations, University of Keele; author Climate Change in World Politics
Chair:
Chrissie Daz
The global south has the power to force radical climate action, Jason Hickel, Al Jazeera
Coming up in 2023
Coming up in 2023...
Aspects of the Omnicrisis
Saturday 28th January, Birmingham & Midland Institute
Talking liberty - In defence of teaching history
Saturday 25th February, Map Room at Cherry Reds
Talking liberty - The seductive power of literature
Saturday 25th March, Map Room at Cherry Reds
United? Kingdom?
Saturday 22nd April, Birmingham & Midland Institute
Talking Liberty - The Future of Free Speech
Talking Liberty - the future of free speech
Saturday 12th November
1.00 pm - 3.30 pm
Map Room, Cherry Reds, 88-92 John Bright Street, B1 1BN
Free entry but donations welcome
Please book via EventBrite
Please join us from 1.00 pm for social time and informal discussion. From 1.45 pm we will introduce and discuss the essay The Future of Free Speech by Jacob Mchangama. You can purchase the essay in booklet format or download a PDF version. You are strongly encouraged to read it to contribute more fully to the discussion, but if you don't we will give a short summary to introduce the key arguments.
Mchangama is the author of Free Speech:a history from Socrates to Social Media, and he argues in this essay that we are in a free speech recession.
"Free speech is one of the most powerful and transformative ideas ever conceived. It is held as the 'first freedom, the bedrock of democracy, the enemy of tyranny, the midwife of enlightenment and the source of truth...But free speech is far from assured; it has not been the default position in the long arc of history. Thus, after decades of global gains, it has now suffered more than a decade of setbacks."
How far do you agree with these assertions? Does Mchangama set out a convincing case for the importance of free speech? Is it helpful to those who want to defend free speech, or are there significant omissions?
Following our discussion, we will agree which of the Letters on Liberty to discuss in 2023.
Free speech in the news:
National Secular Society defends free speech at 'Stand with Salman' event
Arrest of protestors prompts free speech concerns
Joanne Harris faces member vote on Society of Authors role amid call for free speech review
John Cleese set to join GB News in a push for 'free speech'
Most students think UK universities protect free speech, survey finds
Aspects of the "omnicrisis"
Aspects of the omnicrisis
Saturday 8th October
Law and Justice
Saturday 7th May, 1.00 pm - 5.00 pm
The Arthur Sullivan Room, Birmingham Midland Institute, 9 Margaret Street, Birmingham B3 3BU
Law-making and Freedom with Claire Fox (Baroness Fox of Buckley)
1.15 pm - 2.45 pm
Refreshment break: 2.45 pm - 3.15 pm
What Are Prisons For?
3.15 pm - 4.45 pm
Unbearable Lightness of Citizenship
Return of Birmingham Salon Saturdays
The Unbearable Lightness of Citizenship
Tickets £15 (includes tea/coffee) from EventBrite
Citizenship, identity, and belonging
1.15 pm - 2.45 pm
tea and coffee break - 2.45 - 3.15 pm
The emergency state citizen
3.15 pm - 4.45 pm
Our next event will be on Saturday 7th May on the theme of law and justice.
Inside the ‘’incelosphere’’
THURSDAY 7TH OCTOBER
7.00 PM - 9.00 PM
UPSTAIRS AT THE WOODMAN, NEW CANAL STREET, BIRMINGHAM. B5 5LG
Welcome back!
This is a free event for Birmingham Salon regulars to catch up after the pandemic paused our live debates, and for anyone new to Birmingham Salon to come and experience and contribute to a Salon discussion.
Inside the incelosphere
Incels, or involuntary celibates, are an online subculture community of mostly men, who forge their sense of identity around a perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships. The incel community operates almost exclusively online, providing an outlet for a significant minority of incels to express misogynistic-hostility, frustration and blame toward society for a perceived failure to include them.
Rare individual cases have seen incels lash out in violent murderous rage. Most notable is the notorious case of Elliot Rodger, who in 2014 killed six people and injured 14 others before killing himself, referring in his manifesto to a “day of retribution” when he would kill those he was envious of – Chads (men who sleep with lots of women) and Stacey’s (the attractive women who reject him).
Is the incelosphere a phenomena triggered by or reflecting other trends in society? Recent reports suggest that in the US, the number of men going to universities is falling significantly. Morgan Stanley forecast that 45 percent of working women between the ages of 25 and 44 will be single and childless by 2030 in what they call the rise of the SHEconomy. The rise of identity politics has encouraged a pattern of group formation around grievance and oppression. Is this at all justified in the case of the incel?
Speaker: William Costello
William is a Birmingham Salon regular with an MSc in Psychology: Evolution & Culture from Brunel University London. His Masters dissertation is on the psychology of incels. William also writes about cultural issues such as polyamory, sexual violence, identity politics, Birthstrike and racism through an evolutionary psychology lens and has contributed opinion pieces to outlets such as Quillette and Areo.
Twitter: @WilliamCostello
Chair: Rosie Cuckston
Recommended reading
Step your dick up - why incels deserve better advice William Costello, Medium, 2020
What the media gets wrong about incels Naama Kates, Unherd 2021
Why incels are the losers in the age of Tinder James Bloodworth, Unherd 2020
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF CITIZENSHIP
Saturday 28 March 2020, 11.00am to 5.00pm
Tickets £10 available in advance via Eventbrite
With the weakening of national solidarities, is citizenship being replaced by individuated, consumerist and cultural identities? Or does it continue to be built through political solidarities and struggle? What is the relationship between citizenship and language, culture, place and participation in common goals and ideals? If citizenship is more than visas, passports, pledges of allegiance, and other trappings of state organised process, what is it?
Mladen Pupavac, associate researcher, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, University of Nottingham. Co-author of the forthcoming book Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development.
Christine Huebner, researcher of citizenship, Research Fellow of the Citizenship, Democracy and Transformation Research Group, Nottingham Trent University. Christine's research focuses on changing conceptions of citizenship.
The electoral franchise has, in different ways, become increasingly contentious in recent years. Some argue, for example, that the voting age should be lowered to allow more progressive youthful voices to decide the future. There have been denunciations of ‘low-information’ voters, who are allegedly manipulated by lies and algorithms. Should the franchise be extended to 16-year olds? And what about EU citizens and prisoners?
Fraser Myers, staff writer for spiked and producer of the spiked podcast
What are prisons for?
Prisoners are denied many of the rights of citizenship, including being able to vote. But what are prisons for? And do prisons work? Denying their liberty serves an important function in punishing those who have broken the law. But is it not also humane to give prisoners the chance to turn their lives around?
Does the current prison system downplay people’s inherent capacity for change? Should there be more emphasis on people having the power to redeem themselves? If so, what changes need to be made to the UK prison system?
Recommended reading
Home: Migration, Rootedness, Privacy
Takes place on Saturday 12th October 2019.11.00 am - 5.00 pmUpstairs, Old Joint Stock, 4 Temple Row West, Birmingham B2 5NY
Please join us for a day of debate and reflection looking at the effects of migration within Europe, what rootedness and belonging look and feel like, and on how we understand the boundary between private and public life. This Salon is a satellite event of the Battle of Ideas 2019.
Migration and depopulation in 21st century Europe11.15 am - 12.45 pm
Speakers:Dr Vanessa Pupavac, lecturer in International Relations - University of NottinghamDr Ceren Ozgen, Dept of Economics Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellow - University of Birmingham
Chair: Dr Helene Guldberg
Since Poland joined the EU, around 3.5 million Polish people have migrated to other EU countries. In Romania, as much as 20 per cent of its working age population now lives abroad. Around a million Bulgarians work elsewhere in the EU – out of a population of seven million. These huge migration flows are usually discussed in terms of their impact on richer EU countries like Britain or Germany, but today there is a growing discussion about its impact on the country of origin as well.
On the one hand, this immigration has kept down unemployment and provided an important source of income for relatives through remittances. But on the other hand, commentators increasingly speak of ‘ghost towns’, ageing populations, and brain-drain. With dwindling working-age populations, one often overlooked feature has been the need for greater immigration into countries like Poland. For example, over two million Ukrainians have migrated since Poland joined the EU.
Another factor is that internal migration coincides with the ‘Fortress Europe’ approach to migration from outside the EU. Countries like Croatia, that are in the EU but not in the Schengen free movement area, are tasked with keeping out non-EU migrants, while at the same time losing hundreds of thousands of its citizens who’ve emigrated to other countries. Likewise, in Italy it is now illegal to rescue migrants attempting to enter the country via the Mediterranean. But this attitude exists alongside appeals from villages with tiny populations for people to come and live there.
Some expect these migration flows to stabilise or even reverse because migrants will return to their home countries once they have made a good living abroad. Others suggest that European economies will continue to demand large immigration to balance low birth rates and meet the demand for low-skilled jobs.
How does free movement within the EU affect attitudes to migration and citizenship? Should countries actively seek to reduce migration or should they accept it as a fact of the modern, globalised world? If they accept it, should they encourage immigration from elsewhere, and how? If they don’t accept it, what is needed to hold on to those attracted by opportunities abroad? And who should have the final say over this, when migration is an issue connecting so many countries and populations?
Reading material
Eastern Europe’s Emigration Crisis, Josh Adams, Quillette, 29 June 2019The crime of aiding the wrong kind of human, Kenan Malik, Pandaemonium,16 June 2019Migration can support economic development if we let it. Here's how, Mahmoud Mohieldin & Dilip Ratha, World Economic Forum,1 Mar 2019EU migration policy, European Council, 7 March 2019A Romanian village feels the country’s emigration pain, Carmen Paun, Politico, 8 June 2018Origins and destinations of European Union migrants within the EU, Pew Research Centre, 19 June 2017Central Europe: running out of steam, James Shotter, Financial Times, 27 August 2018'A whole generation has gone': Ukrainians seek a better life in Poland, Shaun Walker, The Guardian, 18 April 2019
Produced by Rosie Cuckston
Lunch 12.45 - 1.30
Rootedness - more than belonging?1.30 pm - 3.00 pm
Speakers:Tereza Buskova - UK based Czech artist Niall Crowley - writerDr Greg Scorzo - philosopher, public intellectual, publisher and editor of Culture on the Offensive
Chair: Rosie Cuckston
‘It isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re going that counts.’Attributed to Ella Fitzgerald
In the latter part of the twentieth century, the idea of rootedness came to be viewed as old-fashioned, undynamic and restrictive. ‘A community is something you grow up in and then get the hell out of’, said Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead. For many people, the time had come to throw off restrictions, whether of race, class, or religion, to which rootedness seemed inexorably linked. More recently the critic, writer, and TV presenter Jonathan Meades asserted that ‘roots are for vegetables’.
But one explanation advanced for the result of the 2016 EU referendum is that the embrace of liberal cosmopolitanism values has resulted in a backlash. For some critics, the importance of beloning and rootedness to people’s lives and to human flourishing has been underestimated. In David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere, ‘anywhere’ cosmopolitans are contrasted to ‘somewheres’ with a strong attachment to place. In the eyes of some, cosmopolitanism is superficial and an indulgence of the flighty well-off, although that might appear a troubling and excluding explanation to those newly arrived in the UK from other countries, hoping to establish a life for themselves and their families.
Giles Fraser, an Anglican priest and UnHerd columnist, founded and briefly ran a party called Home, focused not only on a pro-Brexit policy of taking back control nationally, but also linked to the housing crisis and people being literally unable to afford a home. There is also renewed interest in the philosopher and writer Simone Weil, who believed that a sense of rootedness was of huge importance in facing up to the human condition.
Who are the rootless anywheres? Are there still places where communities of the truly rooted can be found? This discussion will look what we mean when we talk about rootedness, and at its social, psychological, cultural and political aspects.
Reading material
A Radical Cure: Hannah Arendt & Simone Weil on the Need for Roots, Scott Remer, Philosophy Now, 2018Why I left my liberal London tribe, David Goodhart, Financial Times, 17 March 2017Clinging to our roots, Christy Wampole, New York Times, 30 May 30 2016Liberalism has broken us – we need a new party to call Home, Giles Fraser, UnHerd, 7 June 2018I Watched the Neighbourhood I Grew Up in Get Gentrified, Malakai Sargeant, Vice, 12 July 2019In defence of gentrification, Niall Crowley, Spiked, 16 March 2016If You Believe You are a Citizen of the World, You are a Citizen of Nowhere, Intelligence Squared, (recording of panel discussion)Clacton versus Cambridge: Why England’s political future is cosmopolitan, not communitarian, J.C. The Economist, 6 September 2014
Produced by Rosie Cuckston
Whose home is it anyway?3.15 pm - 4.45 pm
Speakers:
David Vincent, Emeritus Professor of History - The Open University, and author of Privacy: A Short History (Polity Press, 2016)
Dr James Panton, Associate Professor of Philosophy - The Open University, and co-editor of From Self to Selfie: a critique of contemporary forms of alienation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)Chair: Chrissie Daz
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it. The rain may enter. The storms may enter. But the king of England may not enter. All his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement." – Pitt the Elder
The foundational principle of liberal democracies, that a strict line be maintained between the private and the public, largely revolves around the sanctity of the home. But is it that straight forward? John Locke applied the principle of domestic privacy as a defence of private property in general, even when such property is more social than personal in character. And in the nineteenth century it was argued that only householders could be trusted with the vote.
Feminists have argued that the sacred character of a man’s home causes women’s oppression. But the translation of domestic violence as an issue into the mantra that the ‘personal is political’ has been used to attack privacy in many ways. The Labour Government’s ‘Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act’ of 2004, for instance, gave to the authorities the power to enter your home in connection with unpaid fines.
From the right to smoke in prison cells and psychiatric wards to the erosion of tenant’s rights, the autonomy of the home has been eroding for some time. But when cohabiting adults and children are involved, how should we decide how much state interference is acceptable? How free should we be to interfere in the private affairs of our neighbours? And what are the implications when it is not our neighbours or the authorities but we ourselves who freely expose our domestic shenanigans to the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Alexa?
Reading material
Glass Houses: How much privacy can city-dwellers expect, Leo Benedictus, The Guardian, February 2019
We must barricade our homes against the state, Josie Appleton, Notes on Freedom blog, September 2017Apple sends home workers who listened to intimate Siri recordings and apologises for privacy breach, Anthony Cuthbertson, The Independent, August 2019
Produced by Chrissie Daz
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Speakers:
David Vincent, Emeritus Professor of History - The Open University, and author of Privacy: A Short History (Polity Press, 2016)
Dr James Panton, Associate Professor of Philosophy - The Open University, and co-editor of From Self to Selfie: a critique of contemporary forms of alienation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
Reading material
Glass Houses: How much privacy can city-dwellers expect, Leo Benedictus, The Guardian, February 2019
We must barricade our homes against the state, Josie Appleton, Notes on Freedom blog, September 2017
Produced by Chrissie Daz
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.What Does It Mean to Be Human in the 21st Century? A day of debate
Admission fee is £10. Buy your ticket on Eventbrite or pay on the door.
But is the weakening of organised religion an opportunity to build a more progressive model of spiritual life, one that is both rational and fulfilling? Maybe faith was a dogma that only blinded us from the deeper dimensions of life, after all. Now we are more freed up from its monopolistic power over spirituality, we can maybe plumb the depths of human existence in new and genuinely fulfilling ways.
Matt Lamb, Executive council member, Fire Brigades Union (FBU)
Kevin Rooney, teacher and co-author of Who's afraid of the Easter Rising 1916-2016 and The blood-stained Poppy: A critique of the politics of commemoration.
Steve Fuller, August Comte chair in social epistemology at the University of Warwick. Between 2011 and 2014 he produced a trilogy relating to a transhuman future published with Palgrave Macmillan under the rubric of Humanity 2.0.
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