The Shape of Diversity to Come: Global Community, Global Archipelago, or a New Civility?
Date: 24 and 25 January 2013
Location: Erasmus University Rotterdam, Forumzaal (M-building, M3-15).
Admission fee: €100,00 (ESL-members free, EUR employees € 50,00; conferencematerial and lunch included)
Register: Click here (or scroll down) to use the form on this webpage.
This conference is organised by Wouter de Been and Mireille Hildebrandt from the Department of Legal Theory / Erasmus School of Law and Payal Arora, from the Department of Media and Communication / Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication.
In case you have any questions, please send an email to Dr. Wouter de Been.
For a full description of the conference theme and subthemes consult the CALL FOR PAPERS HERE.
Keynote speakers
Julie Cohen is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. 
Prof. Cohen recently published Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code and the Play of Everyday Practice (Yale University Press, 2012). She teaches and writes about intellectual property law and information privacy law, with particular focus on digital works and on the intersection of copyright and privacy rights. She is a co-author of Copyright in a Global Information Economy (Aspen Law & Business, 3d ed. 2010), and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Advisory Board of Public Knowledge. Prior to joining the Law Center faculty in 1999, Professor Cohen was Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She previously practiced with the San Francisco firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, where she specialized in intellectual property litigation. She was law clerk to Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Chandran Kukathas is author of The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom (Oxford 
University Press 2003). In this work Kukathas offers a book-length treatment of his controversial and influential theory of minority rights. The general question it tries to answer is: what is the principled basis of a free society marked by cultural diversity and group loyalties? Its main contention is that a free society is an open society whose fundamental principle is the principle of freedom of association. A society is free to the extent that it is prepared to tolerate in its midst associations which differ or dissent from its standards or practices. Kukathas is currently chair of Political Theory at the London School of Economics. He completed his BA in History and Political Science at the Australian National University and his MA in Politics at the University of New South Wales before going on to a DPhil in Politics at Oxford University. He has taught at the Royal Military College, Canberra; Oxford; the Australian National University; the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy; and the University of Utah, where he held the Neal Maxwell Chair in Political Theory in the Department of Political Science.
Emmanuel Melissaris is Senior Lecturer in Law at the LSE Department of Law.He is the author of a 
recent work on legal pluralism and legal theory Ubiquitous Law: Legal Theory and the Space for Legal Pluralism(Ashgate, 2009). Ubiquitous Law explores the possibility of understanding the law in dissociation from the State while, at the same time, establishing the conditions of meaningful communication between various legalities. This book argues that the enquiry into the legal has been biased by the implicit or explicit presupposition of the State's exclusivity to a claim to legality as well as the tendency to make the enquiry into the law the task of experts, who purport to be able to represent the legal community's commitments in an authoritative manner. Very worryingly, the experts' point of view then becomes constitutive of the law and parasitic to and distortive of people's commitments. Ubiquitous Law counter-suggests a new methodology for legal theory, which will not be based on rigid epistemological and normative assumptions but rather on self-reflection and mutual understanding and critique, so as to establish acceptable differences on the basis of a commonality.
Jos de Mul is professor in Philosophical Anthropology and its History and head of the section 
Philosophy of Man and Culture and Scientific Director of the research institute 'Philosophy of Information and Communication Technology' (FICT). De Mul studied Philosophy in Utrecht and Amsterdam and in 1993 he obtained his PhD (cum laude) at the University of Nijmegen. He joined the Philosophy Department of the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1988. De Mul’s research focuses on the (partly overlapping) domains of philosophical anthropology, philosophy of art and culture, and the philosophy of information and communication technologies. He has published nineteen books and more than hundred eighty contributions to edited books and articles in various scientific journals. His work has been published and/or translated in more than twelve languages. Among his books are Romantic Desire in (Post)Modern Art and Philosophy (State University of New York Press, 1999), The Tragedy of Finitude (Yale University Press, 2004), and Cyberspace Odyssey (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and 
Co-Chair, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (http://www.saskiasassen.com/). Recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press 2008), A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007), and the 4th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2011). The Global City came out in a new fully updated edition in 2001. She organized the research for and edited the volume on Human Settlement of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Oxford, UK: EOLSS Publishers) [http://www.eolss.net ]. Her books are translated into over twenty languages. She has received multiple honours and awards, including several doctor honoris causa from universities in the US and other countries. Her books are translated into over twenty languages.
About the conference
The nation state, imagined as a formation encompassing a culturally unified people, is now straining under the challenges of globalization and the revolution in communication technology. This conference will consider the dynamic changes that are currently taking place with respect to cultural and religious diversity as a result of the explosion in communication technologies, address the conflicts they give rise to, and discuss the ramifications for both law and politics.
Two views on the impact of communication and information technology dominate the scholarship: one in which communication leads to the emergence of a global community and an interconnected global culture; and a second in which it leads to an archipelago of communities that do not necessarily converge with the boundaries nation states, i.e. to a cultural Balkanization of the world across national borders.
This conference will also address a third alternative. Instead of presenting the implications of the networked information and communication infrastructure in the opposing metaphors of a global community or a global archipelago, one can also argue for a normative understanding of what is at stake. Instead of endorsing either utopian notions of global community or dystopian fears of an Internet with walled gardens, one can vouch for an internet that allows for interconnectivity without accepting the increased personalization that leads to unprecedented surveillance and social sorting in both the private and the public sphere.
We hope this conference will be a stimulating gathering of scholars from different disciplines and increase our understanding of the legal and political implications of globalization and communication technology for national and cultural identity.
Programme
Click here for the preliminary programme.
For an overview of the abstracts click here.
For more information about public transport to the Conference site, click here and here.
Suggestions for accommodations, click here. A map of the Campus can be found here.
Rotterdam is a great city to visit. It is a truly multicultural city. It is one of the biggest harbors in the world and an architectural laboratory. The city has several interesting museums, such as the Kunsthal and the Wereldmuseum and an interesting nightlife.
Rotterdam is simply bursting with architecture, design, art and culture, but also boasts a wide and varied range of shops, attractions, festivals, restaurants and parks. That’s why Rotterdam is a city that you can rediscover time and again. For more information and tips/places to go, click here.
