Annual Conference 2022: Reimagining Social Contracts

The Knowledge Platform Annual Conference #KPAC22 is the Platform's signature event that brings together our vibrant community for thought-provoking discussions. This year will be our 10th Annual Conference, and as in previous years, we invite representatives from national and international governments and policy organs, think-thanks, journalists, INGO practitioners, activists, diplomats, and field researchers from around the globe to join us. These diverse actors assemble each year with a singular aim: to present their latest projects and freshest ideas, and engage their peers to learn and improve security and justice policy and programs.This year's theme is Reimagining Social Contracts.

 

What is the glue that holds societies together? In the Western tradition of political thought, the answer is often the ‘social contract’: citizens giving up part of their freedom in exchange for a stake in society and collective services. That contract is a fiction; there is no such document, and every societal arrangement has its own history and form. Humans were never free and unbound in the state of nature.

 

However, it is a useful fiction. It provides us with a common language for the ‘bigger picture’ of what is fair and just; who gets what and who provides it.Using this fiction, we see how many countries struggle in coming to inclusive, legitimate and sustainable societal arrangements. Simultaneously, we see that international interveners struggle to achieve their aims because of factors linked to broader societal arrangements or due to the application of Western ideas in societies with different a ideological background, culture or history.

 

 

https://bit.ly/3dpxozO