NGOization, 'civil society' and social change, 13 November Title: NGOization, 'civil society' and social change: Complicity, contradictions and prospects Speaker: Aziz Choudry Date: Thursday 13 November, 2014 Time: 12:30-14:00 Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College, UKZN Topic: Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seem to be everywhere. Alongside the rapid proliferation of NGOs in recent decades, NGOization - the professionalization and institutionalization of social action - has long been a hotly contested issue in grassroots social movements and communities of resistance across the world. This seminar will ask how this phenomenon impacts on struggles for social and environmental justice. How has it challenged - or reinforced - the forces of capitalism and colonialism? And what political, economic, social and cultural interests are served? Speaker: Aziz Choudry is Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and Research Associate affiliated with the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, University of Johannesburg. He is co-author of Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants (Fernwood, 2009), and co-editor of Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Organize! Building from the local for Global Justice (PM Press/Between the Lines, 2012), and NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects (Zed Books, 2013). A longtime activist, he currently serves on the boards of the Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal and the Global Justice Ecology Project. He is also a co-initiator and part of the editorial team of www.bilaterals.org, a website supporting resistance against bilateral free trade and investment agreements.  Back

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