Ahead of the Conceptualising Community conference and summer school, we are holding an online interview series with each of our keynote speakers, in conversation with a scholar from the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law. You can find the recordings for the interviews below.
‘Talking Community’ with Dilar Dirik, interviewed by Hanifi Bariş
“It was a quest that connected in many ways Kurdish people’s oppression and quest for freedom and liberation, but united it also with the struggles of other peoples in the world, was always also concerned with other questions […] The three main principles, if you will, of the movement around democratic confederalism, are actually three things that are not only immediately linked to the Kurdish question, which are: women’s liberation, radical democracy and ecology. These are three things that are all relevant to social issues and political issues around the world. We are living through a time of war, of ecocide, of feminicide, so in that sense it’s a movement that unites in different ways — organisationally and also ideologically — genocide survivors, guerrilla fighters, political prisoners, workers in their workplaces, refugees, homemakers.”
Dilar Dirik
‘Talking Community’ with Gerald Taylor Aiken, interviewed by Rachel Shanks
“Quite often people mean different things by it, when they say ‘community’ or they invoke this concept of community, and I’m particularly fascinated by the whole array of forms of togetherness that are smuggled under this one word or concept of community […] There are ways in which community is used regressively to shut down, to foreclose debate, to settle, and to be more static. So drawing boundaries: who’s in? Who’s out? A community can also increase agency. It can also allow people to achieve more together with others than they would otherwise be able to by themselves.”
Gerald Taylor Aiken