Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it.
Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far
and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
"The Old Poets of China" by Mary Oliver

Like a Kite Flying in a Hurricane: Democracy in a Time of Misery | A Public Lecture

Details

The UP Asian Center will be hosting a public lecture, “Like a Kite Flying in a Hurricane: Democracy in a Time of Misery” by Dr. Nicole Curato on Monday, 19 September 2016, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., Seminar Room, UP Asian Center. The lecture is free and open to the public.  Seating is first-come, first-served, but participants are encouraged to sign up to expedite the registration process on the day of the lecture.

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About the Lecture

This presentation provides an overview of a book project that seeks to develop a defensible theory of democracy in a time of misery. Misery rarely features in conversations about democracy. Much has been said about democracy and inequality, democracy and authoritarianism, and democracy and justice but little about the relationship between democracy and widespread suffering. And yet in the past decades, we have increasingly witnessed the 'spectacle of human vulnerability.' It seems that the more we learn about violence, atrocity, and the daily agony of poverty, the less we recognise what misery actually does to sufferers’ capacity to take part in democracy. The presentation attempt to place misery at the centre of the study of democratic practice. It examines how ‘communities of misery’ embody, perform, contest and lose interest in politics. By ‘thinking with suffering,’ the presentation discusses the ethical and political value of democracy in the most trying of times. It reimagines how democracy can be experienced that is both relevant to context of severe hardship as well as faithful to core democratic virtues. The theoretical ideas put forward in the presentation are based on a three-year ethnographically-inspired study of disaster-affected communities in Tacloban City.

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About the Speaker

Nicole Curato, Ph.D. was a visiting researcher at the UP Asian Center from January 2016 to June 2016.  She is a research fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. Dr. Curato is currently working on an Australian Research Council-funded project which examines the character of everyday democratic practice among disaster-affected communities.  Her work lies in the intersection between sociology and democratic theory, and has been published in journals including Policy Sciences, Current Sociology and International Political Science Review, among others. View full profile.

About the Venue

The GT-Toyota Asian Center Auditorium is inside the GT-Toyota Asian Cultural Center, which houses the UP Asian Center. Please view this vicinity map for your reference. Note in the map that vehicles entering the GT-Toyota Asian Cultural Center compound can only do so through the gate on Magsaysay Avenue. 

MA Programs in Asian Studies and in Philippine Studies: Application Period: 1-31 October 2016.

The UP Asian Center offers M.A. programs in Asian Studies with four fields of specialization: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The Center also has an M.A. program in Philippine Studies that allows students to major in Philippine society and culture, Philippine foreign relations, or Philippine development studies. The Center offers a Ph.D. program in Philippine Studies in conjunction with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. Get an overview of these programs. The Asian Center also houses a peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia. It has published several books and monographs, and hosts or organizes various lectures and conferences.