Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} After the first two reports of Human Economy Conference on ‘Economy and Democracy’, I thought I might chance a more subjective take on the final day. As one of the graduate students lucky enough to attend the conference, the feeling of hope that began in Arjun Appadurai’s keynote address and characterised much of the conference afterward, struck an entirely new chord with me. From where I sat at the back of the conference room, the presentations, and discussions that developed from them, had at their heart the concern for a better world, and an active engagement in the building of it. In this sense, the conference reminded me more of the sentiments of the youth and popular protest movements that I have experienced, and even the burgeoning angry young tune in some contemporary music, than the stayed attempts of conventional academia.In this respect the conference has truly been a success. It has managed to put in place some of the broader intellectual frameworks through which the achievement of a human economy may be possible. But in doing so, it has remained true to the citizens who will be a part of building and living that human economy. If there is to be a more economically democratic future for world society, the human economy project, and the foundations laid at this conference, will play a crucial role in it. In Pretoria, the imagining of that world has begun.Dennis Webster[Photo credit: Camille Sutton-Brown]
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