The documentation of the 8th November conference under the direction of Prof. Dr. Kollmorgen is now online.
The opportunities and limits of civic engagement in local change processes were the topic of the 8th November Conference 2014, chaired by Prof. Dr. Raj Kollmorgen from the Faculty of Social Sciences. More than 70 guests from Dresden, Berlin, Vienna and the region discussed how civil society can be the initiator of local change processes in rural regions and small/medium-sized towns; which motives are decisive for the actors; which opportunities for action and effects they achieve; which structures civic engagement requires and what this means for the relationship to market and state actors.
Three specialist lectures framed the thematic field from different academic perspectives: European ethnologist Anna Eckert (University of Vienna) described the effects of the economization of city governments on civic engagement. Prof. Dr. Raj Kollmorgen (management of social change, Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences) presented the limits of civil society, while sociologist Michael Thomas (BISS e.V.) discussed the scope for action of civil society actors in the social transformation process in rural areas.
In table discussions, various actors provided practical impulses and discussed motives, framework conditions and hurdles of regional citizens' initiatives, networks or associations in the areas of regional development, car-sharing in the border triangle, cross-border volunteer services, energy cooperatives in Saxony, political citizen participation processes in municipalities and new economies of sharing.
CONCLUSION: In order to be able to develop the diverse potential of civil society actors at the local level as a force for action alongside the market and politics in the transformation processes that are taking place, they need an empathetic culture of cooperation, common motives for improving the present in the sense of well-being in the future, connecting and reliable structures as well as time and financial resources to be able to implement their own ideas of "wanting to do things differently".
