HDCA CONFERENCE 2022: Capabilities and Transformative Institutions
19-22 September 2022 | online and in Antwerp, Belgium
How can we organize today for the world of tomorrow? Covid-19 has taught us that we are not ready. We have re-discovered our common vulnerability – not only to a virus, but also to problems and difficulties arising from policy mismatch, institutional hiccups, authoritarian backlash and the effects of increasing national and international inequality. Divided we have stood, unable to act well in concert. How can we improve the structures of living together and face the challenges ahead to build a more just and sustainable world? The HDCA Conference 2022 puts this question center stage.
Institutions, social arrangements, or the structures which emerge from our social ways of living, have been considered from many perspectives through the range of disciplines that engage with the capability approach. The conference will provide an opportunity to let these various understandings speak to and learn from each other, inspired by work of Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen and others.
Central questions are:
- How to overcome social divisiveness - the interrelation between institutions (economic, political, social, cultural) and people’s opportunities to be and do what they value, with a special emphasis on how institutions may have an unequal impact on different social groups
- Shaping structures of solidarity and our ability to act in concert - finding new ways to transform unjust structures and unsustainable ways of living
- Government by discussion - on the crucial link between individual ideas about the good life and reasoned social choice
The conference will also host a number of sessions organized by the coordinators of different thematic groups and regional networks of the Human Development and Capability Association.
Information
Human Development & Capability Association (HDCA)
HDCA Conference | Capabilities and Transformative Institutions