World Financial Crisis and Civil Society

Veranstaltungsart
4th Käte Hamburger Lecture

Ort / Datum
Duisburg, 05.06.2013

Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research

Finance lies at the heart of contemporary capitalism, and financial crises are one of the most disruptive and harmful developments in society today. Current operations of financial markets also raise profound questions about social inequality, ecological integrity, and declining democracy. With such vital issues at stake, one might expect to see large, sustained and influential civil society mobilisation on finance, in the way that major citizen activism has developed on environmental problems, human rights, poverty and trade. Yet, and even after the magnitude of the latest world crisis, civil society engagement of financial markets and their regulation have mostly been small, short and without impact. 

How can this troubling outcome be explained, and what can be done about it? The 4th Käte Hamburger lecture looked for answers partly in the features of the actors involved: namely, the capacities and practices of civil society groups themselves, as well as relevant governance agencies and financial firms. In addition, the lecture argued that deeper structural circumstances are important in constraining civil society impacts to reform and transform contemporary financial markets. These underlying structural forces include embedded social hierarchies (among countries, classes, etc.), the pivotal role of finance capital in accumulation processes today, and the entrenchment of prevailing neoliberal policy discourses. Civil society action to counter these circumstances in financial markets could make major contributions to a reinvigoration of democracy both within countries and on a global scale.

Programme:

18.15h
Welcoming and Introductory Remarks
Tobias Debiel
Director of KHK/GCR21 and the Institute for Development and Peace, INEF

18.30h
The Lecture: World Financial Crisis and Civil Society: Implications for Global Democracy
Jan Aart Scholte, Professor for Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, Senior Fellow KHK/GCR21

Discussant:
Peter Wahl, Expert on the regulation of the international Financial System, Chair of the Executive Committee of World Economy, Ecology and Development (WEED)

Moderator:
Cornelia Ulbert, Executive Director, Institute for Development and Peace (INEF)

19.45h
Get together

Hinweis

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