Professor Carol C. Gould (Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY)
“Solidarity between the National and the Transnational: What do we owe to ‘Outsiders’?"
Thursday, March 23, 2017, 4:30-6:30 at Gentry 131
Abstract: Recently, people in countries on both sides of the Atlantic have been wrestling with questions concerning the priority they should give the members of their own state vs. distant others. In Europe, the issue of the acceptance and treatment of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa has been prominent, while Pres. Trump has ordered people from several Muslim majority countries to be banned (at least temporarily) from entering the US and has demanded the deportation of undocumented Mexicans and others. A similar issue of priority to “countrymen” also arises concerning international trade and its impacts on jobs for Americans, as well as in regard to foreign aid, and in the EU and other regional alliances. These practical contexts raise questions of what we owe “outsiders,” whether they be distantly situated or attempting to migrate to a different state, and these questions in turn raise difficult issues of conflicting solidarities. Should we stand in solidarity with fellow citizens and other members of our own political communities, or should we prioritize solidarity with oppressed or suffering others outside our borders? In this paper, I want to make some progress toward clarifying this issue, if not solving it, by analysing the two main senses of solidarity involved here and then going on to discuss the question of negotiating between them when they conflict. I will suggest that adequately addressing this question will involve an appeal to norms beyond solidarity itself—in particular, justice and human rights—as they bear on national and global contexts of action. In this connection, the paper will also touch on the related and much discussed question of our responsibilities for rectifying structural and historical injustices in both of these contexts.
About the speaker: Carol Gould is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Hunter College and in the Departments of Philosophy and Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center. She also serves as the Director of the Center for Global Ethics & Politics at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies and as the editor of the Journal of Social Philosophy. Professor Gould’s interests range across democratic theory, the philosophy of human rights, problems of global justice, feminist philosophy, and critical social theory. Her most recent book Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice received the 2015 Joseph B. Glitter Prize from the American Philosophical Association. Her previous authored books include Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights, Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy and Society, and Marx’s Social Ontology: Individuality and Community in Marx’s Theory of Social Reality.
Additional information: the talk will be followed by a brief reception and dinner. All are welcome to attend the reception. Dinner is open to graduate students in all disciplines. Please contact Jared at jared.henderson@uconn.edu or Rasa at rasa.davidaviciute@uconn.edu if you would like to attend the dinner
For more information, contact: Jared Henderson at jared.henderson@uconn.edu