workshop on Reinventing welfare politics

WORKSHOP ON   REINVENTING WELFARE POLITICS:    SOURCES AND FUNCTIONAL MODES   23-25 March 2018    INVITATION       The Department of Philosophy, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit (http://www.ssus.ac.in/#) Kalady, Kerala, South India, is organising a three-day workshop on the above topic during 23-25 March 2018.   Scholars and practitioners are invited to participate in the workshop as paper contributors/discussion initiators/observers. Participants are requested to register by providing a well-focused brief note on any of issues, which fall under the scope of this workshop. A broad outline of the workshop is given herewith. For a more detailed theme-note and the ongoing discussion, kindly follow the following link: www.welfarepolity.blogspot.com    Co-ordinator, Phone: 91+9447 262 817, Email: [email protected]  

The workshop is to explore various possibilities of re-conceiving the idea of doing politics. It proposes to understand people’s own engagements for advancing individual and social freedom, justice, well-being, happiness, etc. as welfare politics. In the process of the workshop institutionalized notions of political engagement that go invariably in terms of understanding state power as the sole agency or sovereign authority for the delivery of welfare may be challenged.  

    In order to capture arguably possible modes of welfare politics, perhaps the workshop should be considered as an attempt to redefine and/or even reform the state along with its welfare priorities. This may require from us to re-think the different ideologies of welfare based upon their qualitative differences.   

     Even the arguments for reforming or dissolving the state may be considered. In this regard, different ideologies of the state may need to be examined carefully in respect of their consistent commitment for the enrichment of all possible welfare domains in society. This means, different ways of engagement with state power will need a careful analysis. It may even be inevitable to examine the encountering of state’s violence through violent means. That is to see whether violence is considered for its welfare potential.    

    The issue is to think or re-think of how best the so-called negotiations with the power of the state can lead to the achievement of welfare. This is important, especially as there seems to be an obsessive persuasion being exercised in political theory of the idea that the state is an indispensable for the delivery of welfare. The interventions of civil rights/civil society movements are important to lay intricate relationships bare in this respect.  The view that the state is not simply a matter of government and its apparatus, but a relationship rooted in hierarchic power structures that pervade the entire domains of everyday social life, seems to be very crucial for tracking various expressions of welfare politics.     

  It may be mandatory to conceive an alternative idea of doing politics - then welfare itself should feature as politics. And also, in contrast to the present state-centric power politics acceptance, it should be considered whether there may be having any unarticulated imagination and/or assertion to the direction of welfare politics present in the history of humanity; though that already expresses this but that has not been labelled as such before              

  Following may be some of the broad aspects that are to be taken up for discussion in relation to the basic question on the possibility of reinventing welfare politics:   · 

       Different source and engagements welfare politics available across the world.   ·     

   Different way of understanding welfare practices in the history of humanity.   ·     

   Possibility of differentiating welfare politics from the politics of welfare state.   · 

       Different ideologies of welfare and their scope for welfare politics.   ·   

     Justifications and challenges of welfare politics.   ·     

   State-centric power politics Vs welfare politics.   ·   

     Welfare state and welfare politics.   ·     

   Supra-state forces and the burden of welfare politics.   ·     

   Arguments against welfare politics.   ·     

   Grants-in-aid and welfare politics.   ·     

   Subtle locations of the state and contestations of it.   ·   

     Encountering the state: Thoughts and practical engagements.   ·   

     Political dimensions of knowledge and cultural practices.   ·   

     Religious and spiritual sources of welfare politics.   ·     

   Eastern and western sources/expressions of welfare politics.   · 

       Welfare as a Non-economic category.   ·     

    Casteism and welfare politics.   ·       

 Democracy/Socialism and welfare politics.   ·     

   Development and welfare politics.   ·         

Interventions of Civil society movements.   ·       

 The idea of stateless society.