Past Events
- The Institute of Ideas and the Institut Français present:
- Attention Seeking
- Multiculturalism and the politics of recognition
- Venue: Institut Français, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT
- Date: November 16, 2002
- Time: 10.30am - 6.45pm
- Tickets: £25 (£20 concessions) IoI associates £20 (£15 concessions)
- Booking: For tickets or information call 020 7269 9220
Transcripts available:
The demand for recognition is not confined to ethnicity. Sufferers from undiagnosed symptoms demand medical recognition; gay people demand official recognition for same-sex partnerships; individuals litigate to have grievances endorsed by officialdom.
This one-day conference will explore whether all this is good for social harmony and individual self-realisation, or simply indulgent and fragmentary.
10.30am - 12noon Can multiculturalism work?
Speakers
- Bonnie Greer
- novelist and playwright
- Adam Kuper
- Professor of Social Anthropology, Brunel University
- Kenan Malik
- author of The Meaning of Race
- Farhad Khosrokhavar
- professor at the Ecole des Hautes Études
Chair
- Tiffany Jenkins
- Institute of Ideas
12.30 - 1.30pm
Diversity
celebrating difference or making a virtue of inequality?
Speakers
- Dr Paul Kelly
- editor of Multiculturalism Reconsidered
- Raj Pal
- Head of Museums and Art, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council
- Bruno Waterfield
- ePolitix.com
Chair
- Dolan Cummings
- Institute of Ideas
1.30 - 2.30pm
Lunch
2.30 - 4:00pm
Please recognise my identity
accounting for the contemporary concern with recognition
Identity politics, whether in the realm of race, culture, sexuality or even individual self-worth, dominate the contemporary world. Some argue that social progress develops through the struggle for recognition of these identities. Has the need for recognition always been a key driver in history? To what extent is our identity based on having our differences affirmed? Is the claim for recognition of identity an end in itself?
Speakers
- Elazar Barkan
- author of The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices
- Stephen A Erickson
- E Wilson Lyon Professor of Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Pomona College in Claremont, California
- Frank Furedi
- Professor of Sociology, University of Kent at Canterbury
- Simon Thompson
- Author of The Political Theory of Recognition, forthcoming from Polity Press
Chair
- Claire Fox
- Institute of Ideas
4:30 - 5.30pm
Claim-making and recognition
cases in point
A panel will look at the arenas politics, litigation, crime and health to see how the demand for identity lead to claims for recognition.
Speakers
- Tracey Brown
- contributor to Compensation Crazy: Do We Blame and Claim Too Much?
- Phil Carney
- researcher at Middlesex University
- Dr Michael Fitzpatrick
- GP and author of The Tyranny of Health
- Chris Gilligan
- lecturer in sociology at the University of Ulster and Research Fellow of the Centre for Irish Studies, University of Salford
Chair
- Tiffany Jenkins
- Institute of Ideas
5.45 - 6.45pm
Should governments be in the recognition business?
If recognition is accepted as a fundamental human need, to what extent do we have to change our public and private institutions to take account of it? Does the demand for official identity recognition give the state a new legitimacy in establishing relationships with individuals?
Speakers
- Mick Hume
- editor of spiked and columnist for The Times
- Oonagh Reitman
- research fellow at the Gender Institute, LSE
- Dominic Standish
- columnist for the Italy Daily section of the International Herald Tribune
- Farhad Khosrokhavar
- professor at the Ecole des Hautes Études
Chair
- Claire Fox
- Institute of Ideas
Books by speakers:
All books below are available from Amazon
Adam Kuper
Culture: the Anthropologists' Account
Elazar Barkan
The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices
Reading:
Frank Furedi 'The Institutionalisation of recognition - evading the moral stalemate' (pdf), a paper given at Cardiff University in April 2002.
See also IoI Briefing: Multiculturalism in Anthropology
Special thanks to Geraldine D'Amico, cultural attaché with the French Embassy, Catherine Audard, chair of the Forum for European Philosophy and Nicolas Chapuis, director of the Institut Français.