Lecture in the series The State in a Globalizing World: Problematic, yet indispensable’

‘Social change, civil society, and the role of the state’

In our rapid changing societies social change and innovation are occurring in a rather
autonomous way. At the end of the process, it is often the state that codifies what society
has already developed and accepted. It seems that we will need a lot of innovation and
social transformation in order to cope with the challenges of new scarcities, climate change, migration and demographic changes such as aging populations in Western world and population growth in developing countries. What role has the state, if any, in these
processes of social change and innovation? And what kind of state? In other words, how
should the state itself be the object, as well as the subject, of social change?

Hilary Wainwright is research director of the New Politics Programme at the Transnational
Institute (TNI), and Co-editor of Red Pepper, a popular British new left magazine. She is a
leading researcher and writer on the emergence of new forms of democratic accountability
within parties, movements and the state. She has documented countless examples of
resurgent democratic movements from Brazil to Britain and the lessons they provide for
progressive politics. Her books include Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (Verso/TNI, 2003) and Arguments for a New Left: Answering the Free Market Right (Blackwell, 1993).

Datum:
Maandag 18 juni 2012,18.00-19.30
Locatie:
VU Universiteit