Colloquium on grounded normative theory: work, community, contestation
Seminar
Event date
Monday 18 May 2026, 12pm to Tuesday 19 May 2026, 4pm
Location
In-person only
D/N/104
D/N/104
Booking
Booking required
Event details
Email Ruth Kelly (ruth.kelly@york.ac.uk) to register
A growing literature on grounded normative theory - drawing on primarily on ethnographic and archival research - shows how attending to what people communicate in specific deliberative contexts and political struggles, and exploring the conditions under which this can be politically transformative, can provide a powerful starting point for theorising.
During the colloquium, a series of pre-circulated papers will explore what methods we can use to develop grounded normative theory, what they might draw our attention to, and what they might obscure. From workplace organising, electoral politics, and public protest, to cultural practices, and relational and reproductive economies — what comes in and out of focus in different sites of struggle, deliberation, and meaning-making? Especially in contexts where the political atmosphere is marked by fear and intimidation, how can we navigate participants’ silences, absences, and hesitancy, and, in tandem, desires to articulate, tell stories, and be heard?
Part 1: Work, Community, Contestation
Work
- Paul Apostolidis will discuss how theoretically redolent concepts might emerge from and be deployed in different sites of activism by workers subject to capitalist racialisation.
- Maro Pantazidou will show how engaging with practices of care (in Greece) allow us to rethink time as a collective resource and re-imagine the place of work in our societies.
Community (discussant: Laura Forster)
- Saba Joshi will discuss how struggles against land dispossession in Cambodia are framed, helping us to think differently about resistance and social reproduction.
- Emrah Karakus will discuss how the Kurdish concept of bedel (debt, sacrifice, obligation) shapes queer and trans lives, networks, and political imaginaries.
Contestation
- Ruth Kelly will discuss the conditions under which adda (playful, leisurely gossip) in Bangladesh can enable democratic contestation and unsettle ecologies of social ignorance.
- Kieran Dunn will develop an outline account of structural injustice focusing on racial injustice to consider what responsibility political theorists have to rectify historical injustice.
Part 2: Curating public conversations about justice - learning from Bangladesh
The use of critical and dissenting art practice to bring important issues to public attention and open up a space for dialogue and meaning-making has significant potential to inform grounded normative theorising, not just as examples to discuss, but as methodologies for theorists to engage with (in collaboration with practitioners). These have potential not only to reveal and inform public dialogue, but as practices that might foster theorists’ ability to unlearn and detach themselves from colonial subjectivities, and learn to notice different things about the world.
In this part of the workshop we will discuss a draft funding bid (Ruth Kelly, Alison Green, Shohrab Jahan, Naznin Akter Banu, Jukta Saha) exploring how cultural and curatorial practices support and enable public deliberation under conditions of risk and constraint.
Our proposition is that site-specific approaches that draw on culturally resonant practices enable critical public conversations to be relevant and pointed, while also navigating – and giving participants the skills to navigate – locally-specific constraints.
Bangladesh is an important place to learn from, having long faced severe risks and threats, and yet sustaining vibrant and playful deliberative cultures even under authoritarianism. After the 2024 July uprising, the country faces a convergence of risks – between technocratic ‘solutions’ and populist backlash – that echo global challenges (cf. Chowdhury 2024). Drawing on decades of critical art practice that engages activist agendas and challenges elitist hierarchies, curatorial practice in Bangladesh continues to navigate political risk and other constraints to enable emancipatory conversations.
To inform our discussion, Naznin Akter Banu will present her paper - Climate Patchwork: Understanding the ‘Field’ through a Patchy Place-Time Analysis.
During the colloquium, a series of pre-circulated papers will explore what methods we can use to develop grounded normative theory, what they might draw our attention to, and what they might obscure. From workplace organising, electoral politics, and public protest, to cultural practices, and relational and reproductive economies — what comes in and out of focus in different sites of struggle, deliberation, and meaning-making? Especially in contexts where the political atmosphere is marked by fear and intimidation, how can we navigate participants’ silences, absences, and hesitancy, and, in tandem, desires to articulate, tell stories, and be heard?
Part 1: Work, Community, Contestation
Work
- Paul Apostolidis will discuss how theoretically redolent concepts might emerge from and be deployed in different sites of activism by workers subject to capitalist racialisation.
- Maro Pantazidou will show how engaging with practices of care (in Greece) allow us to rethink time as a collective resource and re-imagine the place of work in our societies.
Community (discussant: Laura Forster)
- Saba Joshi will discuss how struggles against land dispossession in Cambodia are framed, helping us to think differently about resistance and social reproduction.
- Emrah Karakus will discuss how the Kurdish concept of bedel (debt, sacrifice, obligation) shapes queer and trans lives, networks, and political imaginaries.
Contestation
- Ruth Kelly will discuss the conditions under which adda (playful, leisurely gossip) in Bangladesh can enable democratic contestation and unsettle ecologies of social ignorance.
- Kieran Dunn will develop an outline account of structural injustice focusing on racial injustice to consider what responsibility political theorists have to rectify historical injustice.
Part 2: Curating public conversations about justice - learning from Bangladesh
The use of critical and dissenting art practice to bring important issues to public attention and open up a space for dialogue and meaning-making has significant potential to inform grounded normative theorising, not just as examples to discuss, but as methodologies for theorists to engage with (in collaboration with practitioners). These have potential not only to reveal and inform public dialogue, but as practices that might foster theorists’ ability to unlearn and detach themselves from colonial subjectivities, and learn to notice different things about the world.
In this part of the workshop we will discuss a draft funding bid (Ruth Kelly, Alison Green, Shohrab Jahan, Naznin Akter Banu, Jukta Saha) exploring how cultural and curatorial practices support and enable public deliberation under conditions of risk and constraint.
Our proposition is that site-specific approaches that draw on culturally resonant practices enable critical public conversations to be relevant and pointed, while also navigating – and giving participants the skills to navigate – locally-specific constraints.
Bangladesh is an important place to learn from, having long faced severe risks and threats, and yet sustaining vibrant and playful deliberative cultures even under authoritarianism. After the 2024 July uprising, the country faces a convergence of risks – between technocratic ‘solutions’ and populist backlash – that echo global challenges (cf. Chowdhury 2024). Drawing on decades of critical art practice that engages activist agendas and challenges elitist hierarchies, curatorial practice in Bangladesh continues to navigate political risk and other constraints to enable emancipatory conversations.
To inform our discussion, Naznin Akter Banu will present her paper - Climate Patchwork: Understanding the ‘Field’ through a Patchy Place-Time Analysis.