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Tuesday 28 February 2006
KEYNES LECTURE IN ECONOMICS
How and Why Does Fairness Matter?
Professor K G Binmore , CBE, FBA, University College London
Economists are commonly thought to believe that the operation of the
free market should trump any considerations of social justice. This view
is sustainable only if one subscribes to the naive view that real
markets and other social systems only have one equilibrium. However,
game theory shows that realistic social systems usually have many
equilibria. It is therefore not enough to argue that people will strive
to improve their individual welfare. Their behaviour needs to be
coordinated so that they all end up playing the same equilibrium. I
argue that fairness can be explained as one of nature's answers to such
coordination problems. That is to say, fairness evolved as an
equilibrium selection device. This hypothesis leads to a theory of the
structure of the fairness norms that we use in solving the coordination
problems of everyday life. The theory allows a new interpretation of
John Rawls' famous Theory of Justice that reconciles the seemingly
hostile approaches of egalitarians and utilitarians.
Tuesday 14 March 2006
JOINT BRITISH ACADEMY/
BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY LECTURE
Living apart, living together? The role of intergroup contact in social
integration
Professor M R C Hewstone, FBA, New College, Oxford
Societies, including Britain, are becoming increasingly ethnically
heterogeneous or ‘mixed’, but there is growing concern that they are becoming
less, not more, integrated (indeed, living “parallel lives”). I will consider
what the term integration actually implies and then focus on the distinction
between merely living together and actually having meaningful contact across
group boundaries. The ‘contact hypothesis’ explores the conditions under which,
and the processes by which, intergroup contact can promote improved intergroup
relations. I consider the evidence for contact in four domains: ethnic
segregation and cross-ethnic friendships; sectarianism in Northern Ireland;
Hindu-Muslim communalism in India; and ethnic massacres and genocide.
Thursday 30 March 2006
SIR ISRAEL GOLLANCZ
MEMORIAL LECTURE
Bonjour Paresse: Waste and Recycling in Gower's Confessio Amantis
Professor J Simpson, Harvard University
Moments of historical rupture not only detest the waste of the past but also
define it, the better to dispose of the past as idle waste. Many of us are the
heirs of Protestant anxiety regarding work, and bourgeois detestation of waste.
We find it difficult to recover the charisma of idleness of any kind, be it
religious or aristocratic. That is an especial problem for the time-consuming
and non-utilitarian study of literature. This lecture takes a friendly look at
the literary representation of erotic idleness, and at the lover's idle reading
of past texts.