British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Civil Society in the age of Obama - Jon Van Til, Rutgers University

and

A decade of Civil Society under New Labour - Colin Rochester, Roehampton University 

24 February 2009

5.00—6.30pm, followed by a drinks reception

Two lectures organised by the British Academy and the
Association for Research in the Voluntary and Community Sector (ARVAC)

Chair: Nicholas Deakin, Vice-Chair, Baring Foundation

In his talk “Civil Society in the age of Obama”, Jon Van Til builds on the newly issued paperback edition of his Growing Civil Society to examine the choices that face the Obama administration in the area of civil society, that vast but amorphous set of individual and group actions that lie outside the formal boundaries of government, business, and family/kin in contemporary society. Three embodiments of Barack Obama - orator, pragmatist, and organizer - frame the policy choices of his new Administration, which may find itself forcefully driven by a global transformation in civil society that Obama himself has done much to engender.

Colin Rochester will provide an overview of the experience of the UK's voluntary and community sector since 1997; will critically examine New Labour's policy of engagement with the sector and the ways in which it has been implemented; and discuss the impact of its actions on voluntary sector organisations and their implications for civil society.

The discussion about what we may learn from each other will be chaired by Nicholas Deakin.

Attendance is free but registration is required.   Please register via ARVAC by contacting:  S.Howlett@roehampton.ac.uk

About the participants

Jon Van Til, Professor of Urban Studies at Rutgers University, Camden (New Jersey, USA). A Fulbright Senior Specialist and Distinguished Scholar at the University of Ulster since 2004, he is the author of such leading theoretical works as Mapping the Third Sector (1988) and Growing Civil Society (2000), and, most recently, Breaching Derry’s Walls (2008). Van Til served as Editor-in-Chief of the Non-profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly from 1977-1989, was twice elected president of the Association for Research in Non-profit Organization and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), and received that association’s Career Award for Distinguished Research and Service in 1994.

Colin Rochester, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study Of Voluntary and Community Activity, Roehampton University, having recently retired from his position as its Director. His many publications for both academic and practitioner audiences include: (with Justin Davis Smith and Rodney Hedley) An Introduction to the Voluntary Sector (Routledge, 1996); Juggling on a Unicycle: A Handbook for Small Voluntary Agencies (LSE 1999); (with Margaret Harris), Voluntary Organisations and Social Policy: Perspectives on Change and Choice (Palgrave 2001) and (with Angela Ellis Paine and Steven Howlett) Volunteering and Society in the 21st Century (Palgrave, 2009 forthcoming).

Nicholas Deakin read Modern History at Oxford University and subsequently took a doctorate at the University of Sussex. He has worked as a civil servant and in local government. He has also chaired national and local voluntary bodies. From 1980 to 1998 he was Professor of Social Policy and Administration at the University of Birmingham and has subsequently held visiting appointments at the University of Warwick and then at the Centre for Civil Society, London School of Economics. In 1995-6 he chaired the Independent Commission on the Future of the Voluntary Sector in England. He is currently Vice-Chair of the Baring Foundation. Among his more recent research projects have been: a study of the UK Treasury (published as ‘The Treasury and Social Policy’), a review of inner city policy under the Conservatives (‘The Enterprise Culture and the Inner City’) and case studies of voluntary sector – local government relations (published as ‘History, Strategy or Lottery’) and civil renewal, for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations . His most recent books are In Search of Civil Society (Palgrave, 2001) and a jointly edited collection, Welfare and the State (Routledge, 2003). He also contributed to the Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Britain 1939-2000 (ed. Paul Addison and Harriet Jones (2005/7)).

You may also be interested in attending The Voluntary Sector in British Society, 9.30am - 5.00pm, Friday, 20 March 2009.