SEMINARS. Justice, Citizenship and Economic Development

seminar

The Department of Political Science, Communication and International Relations organizes the seminars about Justice, Citizenship And Economic Development.

The Keynote Speaker will be Oxana KARNAUKHOVA (Southern Federal University, Russia), Visiting Scholar Spocri.

This is the program of seminars:

Wednesday April 22nd / 14h00-17h00
Welcome speech by the Rector LUIGI LACCHÈ and SPOCRI Director FRANCESCO ADORNATO

CULTURAL INDOCTRINATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Discussant: ELISABETTA CROCI ANGELINI / UNIMC

The seminar concerns extra-economic factors influencing economic development in the globalizing world. We will begin our discussion with the fact that increasing complexity and competitiveness makes global corporations to revisit their business positioning and adopt more impactful and innovative strategies. As mentioned in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports (2012, 2014), in the last couple of years the economic development at the national and supranational level is influenced significantly by the presence of people who are able to see new opportunities for entrepreneurship and to present creativity in implementation of business ideas. Obviously, positive attitudes of society to creativity and entrepreneurship help business climate and significant influence of cultural values, norms and arrangements to perception of business, entrepreneurship and creativity itself, which are supposedly incorporated at the institutional level. This constant demand for innovation, creativity, business strategies together with culturally indoctrinated norms force to pay closer attention to extra-economic factors valuable for business and society. We will compare some EU examples with those outside (visibly Russia).

Recommended reading:

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Report 2014. GEM, 2015, pp.27-35

Wednesday April 29th / 14h00-17h00
CITIZENSHIP AND COMMUNITY
Discussant: UOLDELUL CHELATI DIRAR / UNIMC

One of the trends in the recent political and social discourse is increasing confluence of culture and citizenship. Until about the late 1980s multiculturalism and citizenship performed quite different functions. While citizenship was defined by birth and embodied the process of incorporation into the political unity, multiculturalism dealt with incoming migrants.

Legal status and citizenship are also about economic health of a society. But today citizenship looks more as a social status guarantying security and at the same time as a specific identity. Despite a fan of approaches and academic works around the main concern of citizenship is as being based on binary differences, which create a cultural foundation. During the seminar we will touch upon questions on what citizenship is about, how to define contemporary citizenship, as soon it is not entirely about formal rights (even minority rights as we see in multiculturalism), but is a matter of participation in a community.

Recommended reading:

Stevenson, Nick. Cultural Citizenship. Cosmopolitan Questions. Open University Press, 2003, part 4

Wednesday May 6th/ 14h00-17h00
UNEQUAL EQUALITY: DIVERSITY AND EQUALITY IN POLICY-MAKING
Discussant: EMMANUELE PAVOLINI/ UNIMC

The seminar will introduce three different general approaches to diversity and equality and policy tools related to them, namely: equal treatment, positive action and equal opportunities for disadvantaged groups and, third, transformation through mainstreaming equality. We will discuss formal, procedural equality, and the principle of non-discrimination. Another angle will be from concepts of direct and indirect discrimination.

Several questions will be asked: what is the scope of equality policy, what do the categories used in equality policy have in common? Is equality policy aimed at individuals and groups whose members should be protected? What criteria define such groups and their members? Can we justify protection for traditional equality grounds such as ethnicity or gender, while neglecting poverty or class?

Recommended readings:

Yuval-Davis, N. (2011) Power, Intersectionality and the Politics of Belonging. Working papers series #75. Aalburg: Aalburg University

Borchorst A., Teigen M. (2010) Political Intersectionality. Tackling Inequalities in Public Policies in Scandinavia, KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 2-3

Thursday May 7th / 14h00-17h00
TRANSNATIONAL JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY: OVERCOMING DOGMAS
Discussant: BENEDETTA BARBISAN / UNIMC

The idea of the seminar is to signal a tension, indeed virtually a contradiction, in a number of respects. Democracy is usually understood as a form of political organization, in which through specific procedures a sufficiently legitimate political will is formed. Such a will acquires the force of law. Justice appears to be a value external to this context that is understood not so much as connected with procedures of “input” or “throughput” legitimating but instead as a concept oriented to “outputs” or outcomes. The hypothesis is to be discussed sounds following: justice must be contextualized or “grounded” in a political manner as regards both how we understand it and its application to relations beyond the state. In discussing this we will apply to Rainer Forst, who in “The Right for Justification” (2012) takes issue with some erroneous dogmas in political theory:

1) The dogma of the incompatibility of democracy and justice;

2) The dogma that only a state can constitute a context of justice; and

3) The dogma that democracy must take the form of a practice of a demos organized within a state.

In order to achieve a view of the prospects of transnational justice, democracy and to be able to understand transnational forms of democracy as simultaneously a requirement and a condition of justice, all of these dogmas must be overcome.

Recommended reading:

Forst, R. (1999) The Basic Right to Justification. Toward Constructivist Conception of Human Rights, Constellations, V.6 (1)

Coordinator: BENEDETTA GIOVANOLA / UNIMC

The attendance of all seminars attributes 3 ECTS to SPOCRI students, whereas 1 ECTS will be assigned for the attendance of just 2 seminars. For the acknowledgment of credits students are required to submit a written report (2 pages) to benedetta.giovanola@unimc.it

Sezioni

SEMINARS. Justice, Citizenship and Economic Development