SYMPOSIUM

Critical theories of 'social representation and reality'

http://educationaldevelopment.liverpool.ac.uk/2012/04/07/symposium-critical-theories-of-social-representation-and-reality/

     The multiple and proliferating streams of Critical Theory continue to enrich scholarly and research fields in the humanities and political sciences. In the fields of education theory to media analysis, from cultural theory to theories of 'the city', from aesthetics to theories of the law critical theorists continue to employ perspectives and approaches that challenge, provoke and subvert the standard clichés and tropes of empirical sociology and positivism in the humanities and political sciences.

     At this symposium we will hear papers presented by four scholars whose work questions and exposes the power dynamics and hidden conflicts that underlie and structure our social realities. Each in their different ways explore the myriad meanings of 'representation' in our culture. Douglas Kellner (UCLA) considers the role that critical educators can play in the context of the Arab Spring revolutions; Penny Burke (Paulo Friere Institue, Roehampton) interrogates the British widening participation agenda with a 'critical eye'; Catalina Montoya (Javeriana University, Bogota) explores the changing role of the media in Colombian civil society using Chomsky's 'propaganda model'; and Mark O'Brien (Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of Liverpool) considers the deceptions of language in the policy rhetoric of the UK Coalition Government.