CRASSH Seminar: 'Humanising and Democratising Social Spaces and Institutions' (audio)

Ruth Armstrong hosted the second seminar in the ‘Subversive Good’ CRASSH series on Tuesday 27 October. Speakers: Dr Caroline Lanskey (Criminology), Ms Bethany Schmidt (Criminology) and Rev Paul Tyler (Chaplain of HMP Frankland) Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann, Jerusalem wrote that ‘the essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of individuals, and thus to dehumanize them’. In this panel, the speakers will discuss how social spaces and institutions, such as prisons and schools, emerge as political bureaucracies with the potential for dehumanizing and disenfranchising key stakeholders, leading to ‘civic death’. Are there alternatives to such bureaucratized approaches that lead to civic and participatory engagement that humanises the political subject? For more information on the whole series please visit: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/the-subversive-good This entry provides an audio source for iTunes U.