[WSF-Discuss] Seminar and Book Launch at the ESF in Malmö, Sept 18-19 : How Relevant is the WSF to Struggles for Social Justice in the World Today?

Tue Aug 19 10:35:10 UCT 2008

Seminar and Book Launch at the ESF in Malmö, Sept 18-19 :
How Relevant is the WSF to Struggles for Social Justice in the World  
Today ?

Tuesday, August 19, 2008
(With apologies in advance for duplications…)

Dear friends, greetings !

             This note is to give you advance notice of and to warmly  
invite you to take part in two events at the ESF at Malmö : A book  
launch on September 18 (13-15) and a Seminar on September 19 (10-13);  
both at the Babel/Jeriko café bar, at Spångatan 38 – some 200 metres  
from the ESF site.

             Please do forward this message on to others, and onto  
lists, as you think appropriate.

Seminar : ‘How Relevant is the WSF to Struggles for Social Justice in  
the World Today ?’
September 19, 10-13, Babel/Jeriko café bar, at Spångatan 38
http://cacim.net/twiki/tiki-index.php?page=Malmo

Please join us at this Seminar / Roundtable discussion that we at  
CACIM (www.cacim.net) are organising at the ESF together with  
Fronesis, a Swedish journal that aims to provide “… tools for a  
radical comprehension of our time by gathering politics, theory, and  
critique in extensive thematic issues” (http://fronesis.nu/english/).

             The Seminar will be held at the Babel/ Jeriko café /  
bar, at Spångatan 38.  We give an outline of the meeting below, and  
more details of the location, including a link to a map.  But when in  
Malmö, please also check the official programme for details.

Please note that this meeting will in one sense be the second meeting  
in a series of four in this area that we at CACIM are organising or  
co-organising over the next six months – and we would of course be  
happy to have you take part in any or all of the others, as well.  In  
short, we are taking this initiative in order to try to contribute to  
opening a process of serious, engaged discussion on the relevance of  
the Forum to the myriad struggles for social justice that are taking  
place in India and across the world.  We would like to invite you to  
take part in these meetings and bring to them the benefit of your  
deep interest and involvement either in the WSF or in social and  
political movement more generally :

August 29, New Delhi : Symposium on ‘Struggles for Social Justice in  
India Today : How Relevant is the World Social Forum ?’ (see http:// 
cacim.net/twiki/tiki-index.php?page=SJnWSFNote)

September 19, Malmö : ‘How Relevant is the WSF to Struggles for  
Social Justice in the World Today ?’ – as in this note; see also  
www.cacim.net

November 2008, somewhere in India : Follow-up to the August 29  
Symposium, possibly focussing on the question of the WSF as domestic  
or international strategy (as above, see http://cacim.net/twiki/tiki- 
index.php?page=SJnWSFNote)

January 2009 : Seminar at the WSF in Belem, following the previous  
three meetings.  Details to come.

Publication and Launch of updated second edition of World Social  
Forum : Challenging Empires
Book available September 17 on, at the Black Rose Books stall at the  
ESF (in Folkets Park)
Launch at September 18, 13-15, Babel/Jeriko café bar, at Spångatan 38

             In addition to inviting you to the seminar on the 19th,  
I would also like to give you advance notice of the availability at  
the Malmö ESF of the second, revised edition of a book that you may  
know of, World Social Forum : Challenging Empires – which some regard  
as the classic on the WSF; this edition published by Black Rose Books  
in Montréal (see http://www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm).  We will  
soon be separately posting a message giving full details on this.

             This book will be available at the Black Rose Books  
stall at the ESF from September 17, and on behalf of Black Rose  
Books, I warmly invite you to the book launch that is being organised  
by them on September 18 from 13-15 (1-3 pm), also at the Babel/Jeriko  
café bar, at Spångatan 38.

Please do also join us at this launch, over a drink and some snacks –  
courtesy Black Rose Books.  We will have with us there the editors  
(Peter Waterman and myself), the publisher Dimitri Roussopoulos, and  
some of the contributors to the book : Chico Whitaker, Gina Vargas,  
Irene León, and hopefully also others; and surely, copies of the book !

             The Black Rose Books stall will be in the Folkets Park  
(‘The people's park’), some 200 meters from Babel.  And copies for  
reading will be available at the Eurozine space at the Jeriko/Babel bar.

             On behalf of CACIM
             Jai (Sen)

The details of the Seminar on September 19 :

Title :

How Relevant is the WSF to Struggles for Social Justice in the World  
Today ?

Abstract of programme activity:
The WSF is a short periodical event, costly in cash and human effort,  
dependent on polluting air travel. It has lost the shock value of its  
early years. It has also come under criticism for excluding the poor,  
ignoring certain regions, dependence on state support and western  
funding, commercial penetration, and for representing the privileged  
in global civil society. Some argue that if it is to be meaningful  
and effective for emancipatory struggles in the coming period, it  
needs a much clearer programme; others that it must go  
‘local’ (regional, national, sub-national). But this is just the  
opposite of what it has so far been celebrated as being – an open  
space, and a key vehicle for the globalisation of social movement  
today, and in that sense of a new internationalism and global  
solidarity. This may only reinforce what is today already often the  
case, where the thinking and strategisation that takes place in the  
organisation of the WSF as event and process is somewhat local and  
national – and nationalist? What is the meaning and implication of  
all this for the politics and the future of the Forum?
The seminar will discuss these and other ideas that feature in the  
forthcoming revised second edition of the 2004 classic, World Social  
Forum : Challenging Empires – which will be on sale at the ESF.

Place:
Babel (Jeriko, Spångatan 38).

(This – suggested by our collaborators, Fronesis - is a theatre  
located right next to Jeriko, a bar very close to the ESF site that  
they have hired for the duration of the Forum as a place for the  
Eurozine group, where the journals of all the members of this group  
will be available for reading – over a drink.  See http:// 
maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=sv&geocode=&q=sp%C3%A5ngatan+38+Malm%C3% 
B6&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=61.328812,113.203125&ie=UTF8&ll=55.597165 
,13.010817&spn=0.010863,0.027637&z=15&iwloc=addr.)

Day and time:
September 19, 10.00-13.00

Collaborating organisations on this program activity:
CACIM (India Institute for Critical Action - Centre in Movement),  
India, and Fronesis, Sweden

Language:
English

______________________________

Jai Sen
jai.sen at cacim.net
CACIM, A-3 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110 024, India
www.cacim.net
Ph : +91-11-4155 1521, 4155 0963 - PLEASE NOTE NEW SECOND NUMBER !

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