Intergenerational justice over time

In Britain, the generation born after World War II is possibly the most fortunate ever in history. They have benefitted from peace in Europe, the welfare state that has supported longer, healthier lives and respected human rights, growing national wealth and industry, improved housing, benefits and pensions, strong trade unions, free college and university places. Since 1945, most people came to have a car, a fridge, television, international food and films and holidays and, later, computers, phones and wifi. Women’s lives were transformed by growing gender equality and employment, contraception, preschools, and domestic aids.

Yet, despite all these unprecedented advantages and freedoms, older people (like me) are bequeathing, especially to the youngest and future generations, the worst crises in human history: climate catastrophe and loss of biodiversity, forests and wild areas, massive waste and pollution, extreme inequalities, expanding high-tech wars and slavery, public media overwhelmed with misinformation and advertising, growing fascism, mass migration and pandemics, the sale of welfare states and the public commons by corrupt politicians, overflowing prisons, growing sadness, loneliness, mental illness, obesity, homelessness and school exclusions, children’s loss of freedom to roam, decline of religious faith, besides the advantages but dangers of AI, all driven by the neoliberal political economy.

To see these contradictions as fixed dichotomies or paradoxes limits our understanding, explanations, and ability to track their emergence and develop alternatives. Dialectical critical realism offers these possibilities. Dialectic searches for truth through interactions that develop between opposites in nature, society and humanity. An example is how rivers and landscapes constantly reshape one another. Viewing contradictions from multiple perspectives over centuries may lead to reasonable reconciliations, like Aristotle's golden mean. Present excesses can reveal dangers in earlier forms of progress and inform the quest for alternative developments that are urgently needed.  

All welcome. Attend in person (Room 744, IOE, 20 Bedford Way or via Zoom

The Critical Childhood Studies Centre is a home for world-leading scholarship about childhood as a socio-political, cultural, and historical phenomenon in diverse global contexts. The Centre provides a focal point for faculty and students at all levels in UCL to engage in innovative and multi-disciplinary research, teaching, and public engagement geared towards achieving social justice with and for children and young people.

CCSC Lunchtime Exchanges take place on the last Wednesday of each month. If you have any proposals for future meetings, themes or speakers, please do get in touch.