Lewisham protest tonight

Police tonight arrested several people outside Lewisham town hall in south-east London as demonstrators tried to force their way into a meeting where councillors voted to cut the council budget by £60m. (…) Sue Luxton, a former Green party councillor who was returning home from work at 6.45pm, said she saw 200 to 300 protesters, including a large number of students from Goldsmiths College. [The Guardian]

 

Tony Benn

Following on from Barnaby, here is what the older generation had to say on the matter at the Coalition Of Resistance conference:

Barnaby

If the Metropolitan Police were wondering how their heavy-handed tactics went down with schoolchildren, all they need to do is listen to what 15-year old Barnaby had to say on the weekend at the Coalition of Resistance conference:

 

 

Student protest, parent protest

The second day of national student protests is called for Tuesday, 30 November, and the third one for Sunday, 5 December, so parents can also attend.

Police vs. children

It looks very much like police were specifically targeting children during the student protest in London on 24 November. In this video for instance police are preventing a group of very young-looking teenagers from entering McDonalds, pushing them into the marching crowd, while leaving adult passers-by alone. Anyone who ended up among the protesters then was “kettled”, i.e. locked behind a police cordon and kept there for 7 or so hours in the freezing cold. It is unlikely that this sort of policing is going to endear the Metropolitan Police to the younger generations…

Here are some further photos with an eye-witness account: part 1, part 2, part 3.

The following video is an overview of the day, with a number of interviews, including some with 14-year olds who the police wouldn’t let go. (Look out for the smiling policeman boasting to his colleagues that “I just punched somebody” at 9:12)

Finally, Sky News seems to provide some evidence to support the conspiracy theory that the police left a police van deliberately in the middle of the road, as a bait for the protesters to vandalise, after preventing them from marching on towards Parliament and Lib-Dem HQ.

Mounted police vs. students

Okay, a ‘horse charge’ is quite a specific term, as a spokesman for the Metropolitan police said yesterday, claiming that “Police horses were involved in the operation, but that did not involve charging the crowd.” A YouTube video has now however emerged, so you can judge for yourself, whether the mounted police had charged at the students or not, and whether this action was entirely necessary (horses make an appearance at 1 min 10 sec):

Here is the background story from The Guardian.

Update: [27 Nov. 10]

The police have now issued another statement, saying “The police horses were trotting,” not charging. It seems that ‘trotting’ was still sufficient to terrify some children, young people and a pregnant woman, and make them flee and break down crying, as the video shows.

CfP: Development through ANT

Call for Papers: Understanding Development Through Actor-Network Theory

[reposted from CoPEH-Canada]

This is a call for papers on use of actor-network theory in development studies, with an initial deadline for abstracts of 10 January 2011.

Actor-network theory has emerged over the past twenty years as a major conceptual force in social science. To date, though, it has hardly been applied within development studies. Yet the potential for ANT in the study of development has never appeared greater. The growing recognition of agency, process and relations among all development actors. The greater use of networks of individuals and organisations to deliver development. The increasing role played by technology in development processes. All these point to a prospective value of actor-network theory in helping us understand development today.

We are therefore organising a workshop and journal special issue to bring together new work applying actor-network theory in international development research. Our aim is to explore the extent to which ANT can improve our understanding of development.

At this initial stage, we wish to retain as broad a scope as possible for papers; from the more conceptual to the more practical; from those engaging with the overall ANT project to those which apply particular tools and sub-concepts; and from those which value ANT to those which critique its application in development. In all cases, we will be looking for some reflection on the contribution that ANT can make.

The following timeline will be observed:

– 10 January 2011 – prospective authors to submit an abstract of 200-400 words outlining their proposed paper to: ant4dev@gmail.com

– 1 February 2011 – authors to be notified of response to abstract

– 31 May 2011 – draft papers due (7,000-9,000 words), and workshop rapporteurs appointed

– 30 June 2011 – workshop in London for presentation and discussion of papers

– 30 Sept 2011 – finalised papers due

Some travel funding will be made available for attendance at the London workshop. Papers will still be considered from those who are unable to attend the workshop.

We will collate a selection of submitted papers for publication as a special issue in one of the leading development studies journals. Selected papers will be subject to further review in line with journal submission procedures.

If you have any queries prior to abstract submission, do please ask.

Richard Heeks (IDPM, University of Manchester, UK) & Shirin Madon (DESTIN, LSE, UK); Email: ant4dev@gmail.com

Call URL: http://bit.ly/ANT4DCall

Speculative Realism and OOO at UCLA

A conference by the UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory:

Hello, Everything: Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology

Wednesday, December 01, 2010, 10:00 – 16:30, UCLA Faculty Center, Redwood Room

10:00 Coffee

10:30-12:00

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY SESSION

Graham Harman, “What are Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology?”

1:00-2:00

Timothy Morton (UC Davis), “Sublime Objects”

Eleanor Kaufman (UCLA), “Sartre and Object Classification”

2:15-3:15

Levi Bryant (Collin College), “Ontotheology and Withdrawal: Sexuation and the New Metaphysics”

Nathan Brown (UC Davis), “On Method: The Compound Epistemology of After Finitude”

3:30-4:30

Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech), “Object-Oriented Ontogeny”

Graham Harman (American University, Cairo), “Real Objects and Pseudo-Objects: Remarks on Method”

H/t Object-Oriented Philosophy

Schoolchildren strike

Who said young people are not interested in politics?

Thousands of schoolchildren and sixth formers are expected to take part in a national walkout on Wednesday as student protests over fees. (…) At the forefront of the demonstrations will be thousands of school and FE students – some as young as 15 – who have organised scores of walkouts across the country.

In Tesco We Trust

Further on the Banksy theme (and here is the background story):