CFP: Yaoundé Seminar ‘Future generations and global inequality’
Submission deadline: February 28, 2018
Conference date: August 20, 2018 – August 26, 2018
Conference Venue: Yaoundé Seminar, UCAC, Yaoundé (Cameroon)
The things we do now, more than in the past, affect how future people will live. We can improve their conditions by transferring knowledge, technology or things of beauty, or make the world a much less pleasant place for them to live in, for example by failing to stop climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation to the point where human rights come under threat. This raises the question of intergenerational justice: what do we owe to future people? Do we have minimal duties to protect their human rights or more demanding duties to preserve what’s we’ve inherited from past generations? Do we have egalitarian duties towards future generations?
Many of the developments that negatively affect the living standards of future generations – like climate change and resource depletion – do not only affect future generations, but already have an effect on many people’s wellbeing today. Think of desertification around the Sahara, increasingly extreme weather conditions in low-lying coastal areas like Bangladesh, or the saltification of fresh water reserves. These consequences are felt most by countries whose degree of causal contribution to climate change is the smallest. This uneven distribution of the effects of unsustainable behavior will continue in to the future. Addressing questions of climate change are often seen as a common responsibility. But how do we fairly distribute the costs of addressing climate change, given that both the effects and causal responsibility are unevenly distributed globally? This question does not arise for climate change alone, but for other questions of intergenerational justice as well.
There are important ways in which global justice and intergenerational justice intersect, especially (but not exclusively) when it comes to questions of non-ideal theory. How do we fairly distribute the costs of acting on our obligation to future generations in a radically unequal world? What sacrifices can be asked from whom, also taking into account that some are much wealthier than others?
In this summer school we plan to investigate these questions. We strongly encourage submissions addressing the intersection of global and intergenerational justice but also other related general questions. We would also welcome papers on (this list is not meant to be exhaustive):
-intergenerational justice, sustainability
-global justice, ideal and non-ideal theory
-historic injustice
-the ethics of climate change
-duties to past generations
-human rights
-the ethics of migration
We invite contributions from different theoretical perspectives, and we plan to approach these questions both from the perspective of analytical political philosophy and ethics and from the perspective of non-Western traditions, e.g. African philosophy.
This event is jointly organized and supported by the university of Leiden, the Institute for Business Ethics (St. Gallen), the Hoover Chair of Economics and Social Ethics in Louvain la Neuve (Belgium) and the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur la Justice Sociale (CERJUSP) of the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé.
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Fabien Eboussi Boulaga (Université de Yaoundé)
Katrin A. Flikschuh (London School of Economics)
Steve Gardiner (University of Washington)
Eszter Kollar (KU Leuven)
Olatunji A. Oyeshile (University of Ibadan)
Dominic Roser (University of Fribourg)
Submission guidelines
The Yaoundé Seminar organising committee invites graduate and PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and early career faculty to submit contributions on themes related to the conference’s topic. Applications should include (1) an abstract (300 to 500 words) and (2) a short biographical note. They should be submitted via email to danielle.zwarthoed@uclouvain.be , thierry.ngosso@unisg.ch andt.meijers@hum.leidenuniv.nl by February 28, 2018. Applications and presentations can be either in English or in French, but speaking French is not a requirement to attend the event. The keynote presentations will be in English.
Successful applicants will be notified by March 15. Successful applicants should be ready to cover:
- The participation fee
– PhD students registered in an African university: 100€
– Postdoctoral fellows and other researchers whose main affiliation is an African University: 150 €
-Other PhD students: 300 €
-Other postdoctoral fellows and researchers: 400 €
Fees should be paid by June 30th, 2018. There might be grants to cover some of the expenses of African students, but they are limited.
- Their travel costs to Yaoundé (Cameroon).
Once in Cameroon, the accommodation, transportation and catering of registered participants will be covered by the organizing committee.