Petitions and Petitioning: Voice, Politics, Practices, Codes, Technologies conference allows its participants to explore a historically and geographically widespread yet highly varied practice of making claims and seeking justice: petitioning, as well as its conceptual and material form, the petition.
The conference is free of charge and it is held at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies on May 2nd–3rd 2019. The conference is held in English.
What is a petition?
Petitioning goes beyond mere communication. Typically it aims to constitute a social relation between petitioner and addressee and to instigate a response, though in this, the petitioner may be disappointed. Petitions may also be written to address the “plight” of others. Similarly, petitions may be accompanied or supported by various advocates. When published in print or digital media, they may be addressed as much to a wider public as to the explicitly named addressee. Furthermore, petitions might be construed as having a kind of agency: of instigating processes, generating relationships, having a social life and even a career.
Such observations prompt a range of questions: What is a petition? How is it distinguished from other forms of application and appeal? What linguistic codes govern the form and composition of petitions? What etiquettes must they observe in order to be received, heard and acted upon? What politics frame petitioning? What political relations are expressed through petitioning? What can, and cannot, be said? What technologies are entailed in writing, supporting, delivering, presenting, examining and responding to petitions? Who are involved in making, receiving and responding to petitions, and who are excluded? What can be said about the agency of petitions, particularly (though not only) in our times when online petitions may be signed by ‘bots’ as well as by humans?
Different approaches grasp various aspects of petitions and petitioning
The conference will offer an opportunity for speakers to explore political, legal, ethical, social, cultural, affective, material and technological aspects of petitioning in particular contexts as well as theoretical and methodological approaches to petitions and petitioning.
Our keynote speaker Keith Brown is Professor of Politics and Global Studies and Director of the Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies at Arizona State University. His work explores political participation, and pathways into and out of violence, especially in the 20th century Balkans. In his paper “Shaming power: On petitions, manifestos and the politics of intimacy” he seeks to explore the family-resemblances that run through the long history of attempts by subjects or citizens to shape the terms of the language-games their rulers play. In particular, the focus is on practices of petitioning, and how the petition mobilizes, articulates and positions shame.
Convener:
Jane K. Cowan, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sussex and Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in 2018–2019
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki
Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation
The conference is held in the Common Room of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Fabianinkatu 24, 3rd floor).