Using Legal Frameworks to Foster Social Change: A Panel Discussion with the Fall 2012 Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford

November 14, 2012 12:45pm - 2:00pm

Room 280A

The Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law and the Center on the Legal Profession invite you to a panel discussion with the three Fall 2012 Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford (SEERS), fellows who are visiting Stanford as part of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

Mazibuko Jara, chair of South Africa's National Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Equality (NGCLE), as well as the founder and first chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which combines social mobilization and targeted litigation to protect the rights those living with HIV; Emily Arnold-Fernandez, founder of Asylum Access, an international organization dedicated to securing refugees' rights by integrating individualized legal assistance, community legal empowerment, policy advocacy, and strategic litigation; and Zainah Anwar, one of the founding members of Sisters in Islam (SIS), an NGO that works on women's rights in Islam based in Malaysia, will discuss their career paths and their experiences in using legal frameworks to effect social change.

Link for RSVP: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/law/forms/SEER.fb

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First Annual Stanford Social Entrepreneurship Exchange

This event welcomes undergrads and graduate students across campus --- from those who are just learning about social entrepreneurship to those who are ready to launch a social venture tomorrow, and everyone in between!

So, What is Social Entrepreneurship? 
Hear it from Greg Dees, the man who defined it and is often described as the “father of social entrepreneurship”· They did it! Why not You? 
Success stories by alumni social entrepreneurs

Pitch for Good! 
What makes a good pitch? JD Schramm, faculty director of the Stanford GSB Communications Initiative, has the inside story · Social Entrepreneurship Open House 
Discover resources from relevant Stanford departments, centers, programs, and student groups

Stanford Venture Studio Tour 
Could this be the first home of your new venture? Find out from the Stanford GSB Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

Free food and drinks for all!

RSVP: http://csi.gsb.stanford.edu/event-registration-s2e2

For more questions, please contact: Allen Thayer

Co-Sponsored by: 
Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) 
Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Graduate School of Business 
Center for Innovation in Public Healthcare 
Center for Social Innovation, Graduate School of Business 
Food and Agriculture Resource Management Club, Graduate School of Business 
John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships 
Office of Technology Licensing 
PACS (Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society) 
Program in Healthcare Innovation, Graduate School of Business 
Program on Social Entrepreneurship, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law 
Social E-Capital 
Social Innovation Club, Graduate School of Business 
Stanford Entrepreneurship Network 
Stanford Social Innovation Review 
StartX 
Sustainable Business Club, Graduate School of Business

Abstract
At the end of February 2012, the number of mobile subscribers topped 1 billion in China, an average of around four out of every five people, and this number never stops increasing. What are the consequences of such popularity of a communication technology in China, the largest authoritarian state in the world? Among many things, the ubiquity of mobile phones in China, as in other authoritarian states, dramatically changes the way people experience and cope with everyday communication activities, offering unprecedented opportunities for them to expose discontent, air grievances, and coordinate online/offline collective resistance—in short, nourishing changes in political culture and power structure.

My study explores how people appropriate and use their mobile phones to initiate, organize, and mobilize collective resistance and popular protests in contemporary China. Specifically, my presentation will focus on mobile phone rumor as an emerging form of public resistance at the grassroots level in contemporary China. By focusing on several concrete case studies with 80+ in-depth interviews, my study observes that the low-cost and user-friendly mobile device lowers the average protest threshold, creating an opportunity for people, especially those without complicated communication skills, to organize or participate in resistance. The mutual visibility of meta-communication through mobile network greatly increases both credibility of information and sense of security for participation. Additionally, the synchronous mobile communication accumulates rumor discourse into resistance in a very short time. As a kind of contentious politics, rumor communication via mobile phones shows the opposition to government censorship and control of communications, and most important, the resistance against the use of the accusation of “rumor” by authorities to stifle any different voices.

Finally, I will highlight that both the Party-state mass media and the Internet in China tend to focus our gaze too much on “public” communications flows and their related public sphere, ignoring invisible but relevant interpersonal communication as well as the fact that the motivation and actions of human beingsare rooted in the experiences of everyday life.

Jun Liu just finished his Ph.D. study at University of Copenhagen and is currentlya visiting researcher in Stanford University. His research interest covers the relationship between media, contemporary culture, and political and social change in China with particular attention to the importance of new media andcommunications technologies including the Internet and mobile phones. He has a Ph.D. in Chinese studies. He has articles published and forthcoming in several academic journals, including Modern Asian Studies and the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

This is co-sponsered with Stanford's Center for Africa Studies

Abstract:

Rural dwellers in the former homeland areas of South Africa are now increasingly defined as rightless subjects, as a result of the undemocratic rule of traditional leadership institutions, and despite the existence of South Africa's progressive post-apartheid Constitution adopted in 1996. Indeed, customary law and traditional institutions are recognised by the Constitution and are meaningful and of practical importance for many rural dwellers. Many rural dwellers have dexterously combined the idiom of custom and the discourse of the Constitution, rather than pitting the Constitution against custom. However, post-1994 traditional leadership laws are not built on such evolutionary hybridisation of the Constitution and custom. These laws stealthily vest significant powers in traditional leadership institutions in ways that potentially undermine rights and create tensions with the constitutionally recognised system and tiers of governance.

About the speaker:

Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara a 2012 Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at Stanford and a research associate at UCT Law, Race and Gender Research Unit examines the future of the underdeveloped rural areas in the former homelands, which are increasingly shaped by various conflicts and contradictions: between the Constitution and the official version of customary law; between custom and rights; between traditional councils and municipalities; between rural dwellers and tribal authorities; between rural women and patriarchal tribal institutions; and between imposed tribal institutions and local experiments with community-based systems.