Abstracts + Bio Notes

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Is Europe Disintegrating? Moving beyond a past of promises and a possible future of frustrations

Abstract: The European project faces serious challenges which urgently need addressing. There are multiple expressions of how it has deviated from its initial objectives. The erosion of fundamental rights, increasing inequalities and social exclusion, questioning the current rule of law; the democratic ‘deficit’ of European institutions; the rise of anti-European populism; youth unemployment; increasing hierarchical tendencies among countries and the corresponding peripherisation of southern European countries; the growing dehumanisation of difference, whether with European Muslims or Roma, or for those seeking in Europe the humanitarian heritage enshrined in its treaties; the prevalence of soft law over the rule of law.

These references underlines that justice in Europa faces a intricate challenge: to reinvented itself from its centre and its margins. In this presentation, I will discuss some of the circumstances undermining the legitimacy and democracy of the European Union; and, secondly, I will try to pinpoint some proposals, learned from the Global South, that can contribute to broaden the legal and political imagination of EU. To overcome the contradictions and divisions that endanger the future of EU one needs to encourage horizontal dialogues between dominant and subaltern knowledge(s) to discuss governance and the rule of law. These must result in ideas for a more equalitarian and respectful of difference European project.

Bio note: Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra (Portugal), and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned an LL.M and J.S.D. from Yale University and holds the Degree of Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, by McGill University.

He is director of the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, social movements and the World Social Forum, democracy, and human rights in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, French, German, Chinese, and Romanian.

His most recent project – ALICE: Leading Europe to a New Way of Sharing the World Experiences – was funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), one of the most prestigious and highly competitive international financial institutes for scientific excellence in Europe. The project ran from 2011 to 2016.

Eva Kittay

Preliminary Thoughts about a Theory of Justice informed by the Ideal of Care

Abstract: Carol Gilligan (1982) famously counterposed an ethic of care to an ethic of justice. Reconciling the two ethics has occupied much of the literature by care ethicists. I make a recommendation about how to speak of care with respect to justice. If we hold fixed the distinction between an ethical and a political theory. The question of justice is the question of how we arrange our social institutions so that citizens can realize an ethical life. This suggests that a vision of an ethical life informs a theory of justice. For instance, a Kantian conception of ethical life informs Rawls theory of justice. What if the ethical life informing a theory of justice was an ethic of care, instead of, for instance, a Kantian or a utilitarian theory? How would fundamental concepts in regent theories of justice be altered if the ethical ideal was drawn from an ethic of care. How would we think about rights? About the social contract? About the characterization of the citizen to whom justice was due? Etc. I argue that all these concepts would undergo a transformation and give examples of what changes would emerge.

Bio note: Eva Kittay is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook and a Senior Fellow of the Stony Brook Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics, and an Affiliate of the Women's Studies Program. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH Fellowship, and the APA and Phi Beta Kappa Lebowitz Prize. She has also been recognized for her work in Feminist Philosophy, being named Women Philosopher of the Year (2003-2004) by the Society for Women in Philosophy and having chaired the Committee on the Status of Women (1997-2001). She chairs and was a founder of Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute, a summer program for undergraduates who are from groups underrepresented in philosophy. She is currently writing a monograph tentatively entitled Disabled Minds and Things That Matter: Lessons for a Humbler Philosophy.

Frank Vandenbroucke

Justice in Europe: on the bridge between science and politics

Abstract: Among social policy scholars, there has been a persistent tendency to present arguments in favour of an explicit social dimension to the European project in an instrumental way, which I would label as ‘functionalist’: often, social initiatives have been called for on the basis of their instrumental necessity to sustain prosperous economies in a well-functioning European Union. Using the Eurozone problematic as an example, I argue that ‘functionalist arguments’ are important, but one should not overstretch them; the problem at hand is political and the challenge is to identify common standards and policy rules that are functionally relevant (taking on board a combination of arguments on what a well-functioning monetary union requires) and legitimate in view of shared aspirations across the member states. What is ‘needed’ and what is ‘imposed’ by monetary unification in Europe, depends on the fundamental aspirations that drive the European project at large. To understand these aspirations, we have to reconnect with the point and purpose of the European project, as it originally originated, but we should not do that in an uncritical way. Hence, academic contributions to debates about the social dimension of the EU should incorporate foundational normative thinking as well as empirical analyses, and they should take on board ‘the politics’ as much as ‘the economics’ of the challenges confronting the EU. In short, when we think about conceptions of justice for the EU, we are bound to be on a bridge between normative and empirical science and politics.

Background literature:

1) Vandenbroucke, Structural convergence versus systems competition: limits to the diversity of labour market policies in the European Economic and Monetary Union, ECFIN discussion paper 065, European Commission Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, Brussels, 20 July 2017.

Downloadable via http://www.frankvandenbroucke.uva.nl/en_GB/publicaties , publication nr. 292.

2) Vandenbroucke, The idea of a European Social Union: a normative introduction, Introductory chapter in: Vandenbroucke, Barnard, De Baere (eds.), A European Social Union After the Crisis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Downloadable (as submitted) via http://www.frankvandenbroucke.uva.nl/en_GB/publicaties , publication nr. 263.

Bio note: Frank Vandenbroucke studied economics in Leuven and Cambridge, UK, and received his D.Phil. in Oxford. He was Minister for Social Security, Health Insurance, Pensions and Employment in the Belgian Federal Government (1999-2004), and Minister for Education and Employment in the Flemish Regional Government (2004-2009). Vandenbroucke was closely involved with the launching of the EU’s Lisbon Strategy in 2000, notably with the development of its social dimension. Although he was full-time engaged in politics until 2011, he published in international journals (Mathematical Social Sciences, Journal of European Social Policy, Intereconomics) and Belgian social policy journals. Frank Vandenbroucke is University Professor at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He also teaches at the University of Antwerp (UA), where he holds the chair “Herman Deleeck”. His current research focuses on the impact of the EU on the development of social and employment policy in the EU Member States.

He was the chair of a Commission on Pension Reform, set up by the Belgian Government, which report was published in June 2014. More information and publications at www.frankvandenbroucke.uva.nl

Jonathan Wolff

Method in Philosophy and Public Policy: Applied Philosophy versus Engaged Philosophy

Abstract: It is tempting to think that the way to link philosophical theory to practical issues of justice and policy is, first, to clarify and defend the appropriate moral principles or principles of justice, and then to apply it to the problem in hand. This can be called the ‘applied philosophy’ approach. There are, however, many difficulties for this approach, including what I term the problems of dogmatism; under-determination; implausibility of recommendations; ‘the second-best’; blindspots; and conceptual inadequacy. Instead I recommend an approach which I term ‘engaged philosophy’. It starts from an empirical and philosophical analysis of the problem in hand, also looking at comparative attempts to solve it. It draws on any relevant conceptual and normative resources to approach a resolution, proceeding through a number of stages. There is no formula or principle that can be applied in every case, although often the idea of ‘harm reduction’ can point in a promising direction of compromise.
 

Bio note: Jonathan Wolff is the Blavatnik Chair in Public Policy and Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College. He was formerly Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Arts and Humanities at UCL.

His recent work has largely concerned equality, disadvantage, social justice and poverty, as well as applied topics such as public safety, disability, gambling, and the regulation of recreational drugs, which he has discussed in his books Ethics and Public Policy: A Philosophical Inquiry (Routledge 2011) and The Human Right to Health (Norton 2012). His most recent book is An Introduction to Moral Philosophy (Norton 2018). Earlier works include Disadvantage (OUP 2007), with Avner de-Shalit; An Introduction to Political Philosophy (OUP, 1996, third edition 2016); Why Read Marx Today? (OUP 2002); and Robert Nozick (Polity 1991).

He has had a long-standing interest in health and health promotion, including questions of justice in health care resource allocation, the social determinants of health, and incentives and health behaviour.

He has been a member of the Nuffield Council of Bioethics, the Academy of Medical Science working party on Drug Futures, the Gambling Review Body, the Homicide Review Group, an external member of the Board of Science of the British Medical Association, and a Trustee of GambleAware. He writes a regular column on higher education for the Guardian.

Matteo Jessoula

Pensions and anti-poverty policies: established frameworks, transformative challenges - redistribution or Redistribution?

Bio note:

Matteo Jessoula is Associate Professor at the University of Milan, Department of Social and Political Sciences. His appointments include Director of the Welfare Laboratory, Director of the International Observatory on Social Cohesion and Inclusion, Coordinator of LPF-Comparative Politics and Public Philosophy Lab, and member of the European Social Policy Network-ESPN. His main research fields include comparative welfare states, pension policy, labour policy, social assistance policies, European social governance, institutional change, empirical Political Theory.

Trudie Knijn

Citizen’s rights and justice; two of a kind, or antagonistic entities?

Abstract: Currently Europe is faced with multiple challenges that stand in the way of becoming a community of shared values, realizing the once accepted European Social Model and safeguarding justice and fairness within and beyond its borders. Some of these challenges relate to the concept of European citizenship and its inherent frictions; the now confused mix of historically established national rights and the newly implemented supranational citizenship rights, the renewed debate on European values and its application also to those who recently entered the European community, and the dominance of European economic principles (and citizenship rights) above the social, civil and political rights of outsiders as well as insiders. This lecture will discuss the relationship between European citizenship and principles of justice to find out if and how the two concepts go along or are oppositional. It will be based on the findings of a recently finalized FP7 program bEU citizen in combination with founding principles of justice as distinguished in the ETHOS research program.

Bio note: Trudie Knijn is the Director of the Centre for Social Policy and Intervention Studies (SOPINS) at Utrecht University and Professor of Interdisciplinary Social Science. She has been a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Johannesburg since 2013. She is highly regarded in the field of social policy, welfare, gender and care and social intervention research. She is currently coordinator of and PI in the EU Horizon2020 program ETHOS, a cross-national research program aiming to develop an empirical based European Theory of Justice and PI in the EU Horizon2020 research program SOLIDUS, a cross-national study on social policy and solidarity in 10 EU member states. Recently she was part of the executive committee and PI in the EU FP7 research programme bEUcitizen on European citizenship (a study in 17 EU members states, Turkey and Israel), Following from this programme she co-edited two books that will be published in 2018; with Manuela Naldini ‘Gender and Generational Division in EU citizenship’ and with Sandra Seubert, Marcel Hoogenboom, Sybe de Vries and Frans van Waarden ‘Moving Beyond Barriers: Prospects for European Citizenship’ (both Edward Elgar Publishing).