Fall 2023 Colloquium Series

Guest Speaker: Donna Patrick, Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University

November 28 (Tuesday) | 1pm - 2:30pm Pacific Time | Hybrid | Register via Eventbrite

Location: AQ 5067, Ellen Gee Room, Burnaby Campus & on Zoom

Abstract
In Canada, more than 70 Indigenous languages, cutting across 12 language “families” or groups, are considered endangered, a situation that has sparked political, legal, media, and educational attention.[1] While endangered languages and contexts of language use are often analyzed separately from their political, economic, and social-historical contexts, in this presentation I examine all of these elements together through the lens of language education. I trace the past 50 years or so of bilingual and Inukut-language education research, practice, and outcomes, considering socio-anthropological aspects of language use and education in the Canadian legal-historical context and the trajectory of settler colonialism in the Canadian North. Drawing on over thirty years of experience working with Inuit in Canada – in particular, Nunavik (Arctic Quebec) – I try to unravel some of the complexities around Inuit language teaching and how and why particular language education models, systems, and outcomes persist, despite research developments in bilingual and dual-language education and calls for change.

The presentation’s title, “Going to school in a different world”, comes from Wigglesworth and Simpson (2018; Language Practices of Indigenous Children and Youth: The Transition from home to school, Palgrave Macmillan). However, rather than simply acknowledging that many Indigenous children in Canada’s North spend entire days in institutions vastly different from their home language communities, I explain how a “different world” has been, or could be, re-imagined for many of them. Where such a “different world” has already been imagined, teaching models, systems, and outcomes have, in some cases, been transformed; elsewhere, such a world could be created but for a myriad of reasons has not (yet).

[1]  https://www.uvic.ca/news/topics/2018+indigenous-language-unesco-mcivor+news

https://netolnew.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Indigenous-Languages-CCUNESCO-english-web.pdf

Bio
Donna Patrick is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa. Her research has focused on Indigenous and minority language politics, rights, and practices, and has included work on Indigenous language education, teaching and learning, critical literacies, and social semiotics. She has worked with Inuit and on Inuit languages for over thirty years and since 2003 has worked on a number of participatory research projects with Inuit in Ottawa and Montreal.

Right-wing Religious Movements, Power and Politics: Insights from Brazil

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Guest Speaker: Dr. Geoffrey Pleyers, FNRS Professor of Sociology at UCLouvain: Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and President of the International Sociological Association

October 20th, 2023 (Friday) | 12:30PM - 2:30PM Pacific Time | Register via Eventbrite

Sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, School of International Studies, and Department of History at Simon Fraser University

Abstract
In the past decade, reactionary religious actors have gained an increasing influence on all continents, from the United States to Turkey. This contribution will propose a series of analytical insights to better understand this phenomenon taking Brazil as a case study.

The growing number of members of the neopentecostal and other evangelical churches in Brazil is only the tip of the iceberg of this landslide transformation of Brazilian religious field and its impact on politics and society. Major factors that gave rise to the current political influence of the reactionary religious actors include the attacks on liberation theology and progressive actors in the Catholic church by the Vatican in the 1980s; social and political alliances between conservative catholic and evangelical actors; change in the interpretation of the gospel by influent evangelical leaders resulting in a different relationship with politics; the construction of an “evangelical vote” and the rise of conservative evangelical churches during the left-wing government and their active participation in these governments and their policies.

While some specificity of the Brazilian political system may have eased some of these processes, none of these processes is specific to this country. In this talk, Dr. Geoffrey Pleyers will show that similar processes are at play in different countries.

The final part of the talk will highlight four analytical proposals drawn from the case of Brazil and that invite us to revisit some dimensions of the relationship between reactionary religious actors, politics and society.

Guest Speaker
Geoffrey Pleyers is an FNRS Professor of Sociology at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and the current President of the International Sociological Association. His research focuses on social movements, global studies, youth, religion and Latin America. His main books are “Alter-Globalization. Becoming Actors in the Global Age” (Polity, 2011), “Movimientos sociales en el siglo XXI” (CLACSO, 2018); “Politics and social movements during the pandemic” (ed., Bristol UP) and “Chile in Movimientos” (ed., CLACSO, 2023). He has recently published a series of articles on religion, social movements and politics in Brazil, including A guerra de deuses no Brasil. Da teologia da libertação a Bolsonaro (Educação e Sociedade, 2020). His recent articles in English include “For a global sociology of social movements. Beyond methodological globalism and extractivism” (Globalizations, 2023); “The pandemic is a battlefield. Social movements during the COVID-19 lockdown” (Journal of Civil Society, 2020) and “Global Sociology as a renewed Global Dialogue” (Global Dialogue, 2023).