Rough Theory

For the next few days, I’ll be at a Melbourne University Centre for Public Policy conference, ambitiously titled Governments and Communities in Partnership: From Theory to Practice. I’ve mentioned previously that the paper I’ll be delivering there doesn’t exactly meet the ambitious “from theory to practice” goal posed in the conference title. Looking back over my paper to try to figure out how to speak to it at the conference, I notice with some amusement that the introduction to the paper follows the form: “Have you heard about this really interesting and important question? Yeah – that one – the one this conference is supposed to be about? Yeah – I agree – that question is just absolutely fascinating… But I’m not going to discuss that question here.” I then spend my allocated 8000 words, not even answering a different question, but instead just trying to figure out a good question to ask…

For any local readers who might be at the conference, my panel is on Monday afternoon at 1:45 – PM Workshop 8: Perspectives on Communities. I approach this panel presentation with some trepidation, as I appear to be the first paper off the rank and, strangely, don’t seem to say anything about communities… I’m not even completely sure I offer something that could properly be called a perspective… We’ll hope those in attendance don’t have high expectations that the first paper in their panel will actually have what one might call a… connection to the ostensible topic…

My intention is to blog a bit over the next few days about things I hear and read from the conference (best laid plans and all of that…).

The conference program is available online.