breaking the ice

After Strasbourg I was in Budapest now at the research seminar for social inclusion. It was refreshing and gave a lot of food for thought. It was so good to switch from the policy-making terminology to the academic jargon for a day. I cannot remember when I last heard someone saying in the introduction round “I am a critical post modern feminist by nature” or heard the words “deconstruction” or “heteronormativity” so often and the statement that “experience and consciousness are dialectically connected” just made me smile.

In addition there were some really practical thoughts I could gain from it. To give you an example - a discussion about family dependence in lack of social support schemes and the different implication that has for vulnerable youth groups was really interesting. Whilst it is obvious that this is limiting for every young person and I have already though implications that this has for LGBT people whose parents do not accept them - and the linked drastic social consequence through support schemes that are connected to parental income and of course the emotional damage this makes. But one of the speakers drew my attention to the even worse situation of people with disabilities, who do not even have the legal rights to overturn their parents decision and have no way out of this dependence in way to many countries.

So all in all, a pity that I was not able to attend the whole seminar, but I for sure will try to study the reader of the seminar carefully!