Just citizenship: reflections on citizenship and social justice

To be delivered by Professor Ruth Lister

Professor of Social Policy, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, UK

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Allan Scott Auditorium, UniSA City West campus, Hawke Building ground floor (rear of building) 50-55 North Terrace, Adelaide

Jointly presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre and the Centre for Work + Life, UniSA

Must effective citizenship always be an 'anti-power' struggle? 

Hear this expert on how citizenship and social justice work in a local/global world.

Abstract
Citizenship and social justice can both be described as 'momentum concepts', which 'unfold so that we must continuously rework them in a way that realizes more and more of their egalitarian and anti-hierarchical potential' (Hoffman, 2004).  As such they provide marginalised groups and social movements with a language through which to pursue their struggles. The first part of the lecture will discuss the meanings of social justice and citizenship from the perspective of struggles for both redistribution and recognition and will reflect on the value of such concepts for these struggles.  The second part will explore the multi-tiered nature of the two concepts, moving from the intimate to the global.

Ruth Lister is Emeritus Professor in Social Policy at Loughborough University, UK. She is a former Director of the Child Poverty Action Group and has sat on a number of commissions of enquiry including the Commission on Social Justice and the former government's National Equality Panel. She was the first Donald Dewar Visiting Professor of Social Justice at the University of Glasgow 2005-07. She has published widely in the areas of citizenship, gender, poverty and welfare reform. She has been awarded the CBE, was elected as a founding member of the Academy of Social Sciences and as a Fellow of the British Academy and recently received a lifetime achievement award from the Social Policy Association.

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