Schedule of Lectures and Workshops

 

 

22 January 2016, Friday

Inaugural Workshop, 10 to 11.30 am FHI Conference Room Smith Warehouse

Readings for the workshop:

 

Engemann, Denis A. et al. “Games people play—toward an enactive view of cooperation in social neuroscience”.

In Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6, no. 148 (2012): 1-14.

Mathew, Sarah. “Evolution of human cooperation”. In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences 2nd edition, Vol. 11. Ed. James Wright. New York: Elsevier (2015): 259-66.

 

04 – 05 February

Amy Poteete (Political Science, Concordia)

Dr. Amy Poteete’s research explores interactions between political competition, policy, and political development in the context of policies for natural resource management and decentralization in Africa. Her early work analyzed the role of bureaucratic and local-level elections in the implementation of natural resource policies in Botswana. Dr. Poteete’s more recent work investigates development and change in countries where a single political party has exercised dominance for extended periods. The Social Sciences and Humanities Council (SSHRC) of Canada has provided support for an ongoing investigation of whether and how spatial and temporal variation in electoral competition influences policies for natural resource management and decentralization – and the quality of democracy more generally – in Botswana, Tanzania, and Senegal. She also has a longstanding interest in the study of distributional issues and the potential for political empowerment through collective action, participatory policy processes, and decentralization.

 

Lecture, 04 February 2016, Thursday (Reception at 5.30 pm; Talk starts at 6.00 pm)

FHI Garage Smith Warehouse

Title: Exclusion, Redistribution, and Cooperation

Abstract:

Scarcity and degradation of shared resources encourage efforts to restrict extraction. Such restrictions can be achieved directly, by limiting the quantities extracted, or indirectly, by restricting the number of people engaged in extraction. In other words, sustaining scarce resources entails a choice between redistribution and exclusion. Where some see efficiency enhancing clarifications of property rights, others see enclosures and resource grabbing. The choice also reflects and affects notions of citizenship and social cohesion, a point emphasized in debates about the relative merits of universal and targeted social benefits. More inclusive, redistributive options both depend upon and foster generalized trust. Exclusion may reinforce in-group solidarity, but also fuels social stratification and divisions. I first reflect on the substantive and normative consequences of the choice between exclusion and redistribution. Then, drawing on diverse research traditions, I consider factors that are likely to influence this choice, including risk and risk aversion, the existence of marginalized groups (i.e., existing stratification and divisions), and the dynamics of political coalitions.

 

Workshop, 05 February 2016, Friday, 10 to 11.30 am FHI Conference Room Smith Warehouse

Readings for the workshop:

Poteete, Amy R. and Elinor Ostrom. “Heterogeneity, Group Size and Collective Action: The Role of Institutions in Forest Management.” Development and Change 35, no. 3 (2004): 437-61.

(Optional) Poteete, Amy R. and Jesse C. Ribot. “Repertoires of Domination: Decentralization as Process in Botswana and Senegal” in World Development 39, no. 3 (2011): 439-49.

 

18 – 19 February

 

Sarah Mathew (Anthropology, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University)

Sarah Mathew studies the evolution of human ultra-sociality and the role of culture in enabling it. She is especially interested in how humans evolved the capacity to cooperate with millions of genetically unrelated individuals, and how this links to the origins of moral sentiments, prosocial behavior, norms, and large-scale warfare. To address these issues, she combines formal modeling of the evolution of cooperation with fieldwork among the Turkana. The Turkana are an egalitarian pastoral society in East Africa who cooperate, including in costly inter-ethnic raids, with hundreds of other Turkana who are neither kin nor close friends. Through systematic empirical studies in this unique ethnographic context, her research project aims to provide a detailed understanding of the mechanisms underpinning cooperation and moral origins.

 

Lecture, 18 February 2016, Thursday (Reception at 5.30 pm; Talk starts at 6.00 pm)

FHI Garage Smith Warehouse

Title and Abstract: Coming Soon

 

Workshop, 19 February 2016, Friday, 10 to 11.30 am FHI Conference Room Smith Warehouse

Readings for the workshop:

Mathew, Sarah and Robert Boyd. “Punishment sustains large-scale cooperation in prestate warfare.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 , no. 28 (2011): 11375-11380.

Mathew, Sarah, Robert Boyd, and Matthijs Van Veelen. “Human cooperation among kin and close associates may require enforcement of norms by third parties.” Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion, eds. Peter J. Richerson and Morten H. Christiansen. Cambridge: MIT Press (2013): 45-60.

 

03 – 04 March

 

Bruno Bosteels (Romance Studies, Cornell University)

Before coming to Cornell, Bruno Bosteels held positions as an assistant professor at Harvard University and at Columbia University. He is the author of Alain Badiou, une trajectoire polémique (La Fabrique, 2009); Badiou and Politics (Duke University Press, 2011); and The Actuality of Communism (Verso, 2011). He is currently preparing two new books, Marx and Freud in Latin America and After Borges: Literature and Antiphilosophy. He has translated Alain Badiou’s Theory of the Subject (Continuum, 2009). Further translations include Badiou’s Can Politics Be Thought? followed by Of an Obscure Disaster: On the End of the Truth of State and What Is Antiphilosophy? Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Lacan (both for Duke University Press) as well   as

 

Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy (for Verso). He is the author of dozens of articles on modern Latin American literature and culture, and on contemporary European philosophy and political theory. His research interests further include the crossovers between art, literature, theory and cartography; the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s; decadence, dandyism and anarchy at the turn between the 19th and 20th centuries; cultural studies and critical theory; and the reception of Marx and Freud in Latin America. He has also served as the general editor of Diacritics.

 

Lecture, 03 March 2016, Thursday (Reception at 5.30 pm; Talk starts at 6.00 pm)

East Duke Pink Parlor

Title: State, Commune, Community Abstract: Coming Soon

 

Workshop, 04 March 2016, Friday, 10 to 11.30 am FHI Conference Room Smith Warehouse Readings for the workshop:

Ross, Kristin. “Solidarity.” Communal luxury: the political imaginary of the Paris Commune. London: Verso (2015): 161-96.

Bosteels, Bruno. “Community.” Philosophies of Defeat: The Jargon of Finitude. London: Verso (2016).

 

Closing Lecture, 01 April

 

Joseph Heath (Philosophy, University of Toronto)

Joseph Heath is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto. He began his teaching career at the University of Toronto in 1995 before spending two years as the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political Economy at the Department of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal, where he was a founding member of the Centre de recherche en éthique de l’Université de Montréal (CREUM). Heath is the author of several books, both popular and academic. Filthy Lucre (HarperCollins, 2009) is an analysis of economic fallacies and the role that they play in popular political discourse. Following the Rules (Oxford University Press, 2008) reflects on the phenomenon of rule-following and its significance for rationality and social interaction. Communicative Action and Rational Choice (MIT Press, 2001) studies the work of the philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Finally, The Efficient Society (Penguin, 2001) is an articulation and defense of the logic of the Canadian welfare state. Heath is also the co-author, with Andrew Potter, of the international bestseller The Rebel Sell (HarperCollins, 2004), a critical analysis of the political ideas inspired by the 1960s model of “countercultural” rebellion.

 

Lecture, 01 April 2016, Friday, Exact time yet to be determined East Duke Pink Parlor

Suggested Readings:

Richerson, Peter J. and Robert Boyd. “The Evolution of Human Ultra-sociality”. Indoctrinability, Ideology, and Warfare: Evolutionary Perspectives, eds. I Eibl-Eibesfeldt and F. Salter. New York: Berghahn (1998): 71-96

 

***There will be no workshop after the lecture***