Income Inequality and Austerity
Broadbent Progress Summit, 2014
• Moderator: Paul Adams, Professor of Journalism, Carleton University
• Don Drummond, Matthews Fellow in Global Public Policy and Adjunct Professor at the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University
• Alex Himelfarb, Director of Glendon School of Public and International Affairs, York University, Broadbent Fellow
• Janine Brodie, Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Social Governance, University of Alberta, Broadbent Fellow
• Ève-Lyne Couturier, Researcher, Institut de recherche et d’informations socio-economique
The Future of Global Governance: Social Governance, Trade and Investment
2014
The crisis of the social: income inequality, neo-liberal governance and social literacy
Social Literacy and Social Justice in Times of Crisis
Big Thinking Lecture, Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Congress for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Wilfrid Laurier-Waterloo, 2012
This lecture explores the relationship between social literacy, social justice, and the social sciences, historically and in the contemporary era of financial insecurity and public austerity. Ongoing financial crises have undermined the legitimacy of the market-friendly governing assumptions, which have informed policy-making for more than a generation. Citizens and their governments have entered unchartered waters but pervasive uncertainty has not dampened popular demands for equity, voice and social justice, in fact these have intensified. The social sciences have been too timid in entering public debates in these uncertain times.
They have been remarkably successful, however, in demonstrating the social and political costs of income disparities, financial insecurity and social inequality, three critical markers of this moment. The social sciences have a great deal to say about just societies amidst the growing uncertainties of in the early 21st century. It is time for social science to rediscover its original mission of imagining better societies and, with robust critique and social research, opening windows on different choices about what is equitable, politically possible, and socially responsible.
Trudeau scholars Janine Brodie and Libe Garcia Zarranz
2010
A profile of U of A political scientist Janine Brodie, recipient of the 2010 national Trudeau Fellowship, and English doctoral student Libe Garcia Zarranz, recipient of the 2010 Trudeau Scholarship.
