The Ethics Institute of Utrecht University cordially invites you to a symposium on

Participation in Development: a capability perspective

13.30-17.00 on 27 October 2016
Van Ravenstijlzaal (room 1.06), Kromme Nieuwegracht 80

Recent decades have called for more room for democratic participation from local stakeholders in debates on development. This raises the following questions: What may such a democratic procedure of decision-making look like? How can the decision-making on relevant capabilities for development benefit from an expansion of participation from local stakeholders? How can we adequately represent future generations in the present democratic discourse? What issues arise from the underrepresentation of marginalized groups? In addressing these questions, the symposium will draw upon philosophical reflections on democracy, representation, public reasoning, and the role of philosophical theory.

We are excited to present three speakers who have worked on the issue of democratic participation within development from a capability perspective: Andrew Crabtree (Copenhagen Business School), Elaine Unterhalter (University College London), and Morten Fibieger Byskov (Utrecht University/Wageningen UR). Please see below for the full programme for the symposium.

Participation is free of charge but registration is required due to limited seating. To register, please send an email to Morten Fibieger Byskov (m.byskov@uu.nl). Coffee and tea will be provided.

Programme:

13.30-13.40: Welcome by Ingrid Robeyns (Utrecht University)

13.40-14.40: Andrew Crabtree (CBS): “Including the necessarily excluded: participation and future people”

Decision-making in development to Amartya Sen appears to involve participation in public reason, reasoned scrutiny, democracy and the use of Smith’s impartial spectator as a constraint on the inadequacy of public reason and democracy. Future people are necessarily excluded from public reason, scrutiny and democracy, so the question arises as to whether or not Smith’s impartial spectator can be used to fill the gap. This paper explores Sen’s discussion in relation to future people. Finding Sen’s position too weak, the paper goes on to discuss the notions of justification and reflective equilibrium in Rawls before exploring a Scanlonian contractualist approach to the inclusion of future people based on the notions of reasonable rejection and justifiability.

14.40-14.50: Break

14.50-15.50: Elaine Unterhalter (UCL): “Beyond measuring gender parity in education: Capabilities, participation, and the struggle over indicators for the SDGs”

This paper reviews this debate around indicators, gender, education, and capabilities in the light of some different ways to thinking about participation and public policy in the context of education and international development. In particular, it draws out tensions between three different meanings associated with gender that imply different positionings for gender in relation to some of the key ideas that underpin the capability approach. Broadly gender can be understood as a personal attribute, a social relationship, or a component of an ethical aspiration. These different meanings of gender have come to be linked with different approaches to formulating indicators in education, and have become the focus of some sharp discussion in the run -up to agreeing the SDGs in 2015 and in some of the technical reviews of indicators that followed.

15.50-16.00: Break

16.00-17.00: Morten Fibieger Byskov (UU): “Third Wave Development Expertise”

In this paper I offer a normative account of development expertise that I label ‘third wave development expertise.’ Third wave expertise aims to delimit legitimate forms of development expertise. In this regard I build on the notions of contributory and interactional expertise. Contributory expertise denotes the extent to which a group of agents possess (tacit, embodied, or explicit) knowledge that can make a significant contribution to development decision-making while interactive expertise denotes the extent to which they are able to communicate this knowledge meaningfully. While local stakeholders may possess contributory expertise in matters of their own development, they may lack interactive expertise to communicate this knowledge. Resolving this issue, I argue, requires a mediator that can interact with and between external experts and local stakeholders.

17.00: Closing of symposium followed by drinks