2012 Forum
Global Justice: Economic Globalization, Crisis, and the Common Good
February 22-24, 2012
Conference Organizing Committee: Deen Chatterjee (Chair), Department of Philosophy Tony Anghie, Korkut Ertuk, Erika George, Wayne McCormack, Steve Ott, Polly Wiessner
The Barbara L. and Norman C. Tanner Center for Nonviolent Human Rights Advocacy at the University of Utah is launching a conference on “Global Justice” focusing on the impact of economic globalization on wealth inequality. Increased trade and economic interaction across the globe has enormous potential to improve education, living standards, and economic equality. However, this process can also create economic disparities, social disruption and cultural dissolution. There is no cookbook solution for the problems of global justice in the face of economic globalization, for example:
- How can governments be respected and yet some control be put on equitable distribution of the economic benefits from industry?
- How can indigenous people make the right choices when they do not have the experience and education to evaluate the consequences of the choices offered?
- Who can speak for the local people and how can fair representation be assured?
- How can pressing global challenges -- like population pressures, food shortages, and climate change -- be addressed in the midst of the changes wrought by globalization?
- How can governments and businesses shape economic globalization to prevent it from worsening inequalities along race, class, and gender lines? Can they shape globalization to mitigate these inequalities?
- What can be done when internationally recognized human rights conflict with cultural conventions?
This conference focused on the impact of economic globalization seeking to answer: How economic globalization affects living standards and the repercussions of rapid economic growth on social, cultural and political institutions within nations.
Our program included keynote addresses by Richard Falk (Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara) and Richard Miller (Wyn and William Y. Hutchison Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life, Cornell University), and a roundtable discussion led by Joel Rosenthal (President, Carnegie Council), as well as five consecutive panels featuring some of the leading political and legal theorists of our time.
Important Reading Material: Encyclopedia of Global Justice Editor-in-Chief, Deen Chatterjee
Videos
Complete forum schedule with videos
Abstracts