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Peter McLaren

Online conference: June to September 2002
Offline conference: 5 & 6 September 2002, Pretoria, South Africa

A volume of conference proceedings is currently being compiled.

The conference covered four inter-related streams:

• Economy - Large scale issues such as poverty, globalization and the politics of 'development' and how these manifest in local communities.
• Subjectivity - The kinds of individual psychologies and identities that flourish in the current economic and political climate.
• Pedagogy - How the skills and values that sustain the global world order are taught in our schools and universities; and possible alternatives.
• Knowledge - Critical knowledge-making practices of all sorts - from qualitative research methodologies to the kinds of theoretical tools that can help us understand and transform society.

Keynote speakers

Peter McLaren, author of "Critical pedagogy and predatory culture" and numerous other publications on critical pedagogy, revolutionary multiculturalism and critical ethnography.

Patrick Bond, author of "Against global apartheid" and numerous other publications on globalization, critical political economics and sustainable development.

The conference focussed on economy in the broadest sense, including both global economic issues and the give-and-take of everyday transactions. A thematic thread that ran through many of the conference presentations was the idea of getting "something for nothing". Is there some sort of surplus over and above the strictly accounted for, symmetrical, quid-pro-quo patterns into which our lives are arranged under post-industrial capitalism? Or is the idea of getting anything "for free" just a fantasy?

"Something for nothing" was the 8th annual South African qualitative/critical methods conference and was organised by the Critical Methods Society. Thank you to Conference Alerts for letting us use their content management system for academic conferences.