Events

Building an Economics of Belonging

Toward Belonging Project Event

About this event

This event is part of the Towards Belonging project. Counterpoint is partnering with the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California Berkeley, More in Common and Science Po Paris for a series of webinars, conferences, and publications to bridge the conversation across the Atlantic on matters to do with inclusion and exclusion, race, discrimination, and police brutality.

Representative democracies have seen the liberal post-war consensus challenged by various forms of populist and nationalist politics. The United States, despite Joe Biden’s victory, offer a spectacle of deep polarisation and a country inhabited by two rival clans who seem to have little in common. Europe offers a set of fragmenting and dissenting societies.

The debate around these deep divisions has often pitted cultural vs economic explanations. In this webinar, we want to explore the role of economics in creating and destroying a sense of belonging to national and local communities.  The discussion will centre around FT Journalist Martin Sandbu and his recent book, The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All (Princeton, 2020). Read the Financial Times review here.

Programme

Guests
  • Catherine Fieschi, Counterpoint Director and author of Populocracy (Agenda 2019);
  • Saru Jayaraman of the Berkeley Food Labor Research Center at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California Berkeley and a leader in the movement for food worker justice;
  • Simon Reid-Henry, Director of the Institute for Humanities and Social Science at Queen Mary University of London, Counterpoint Associate, and author of Empire of Democracy (John Murray, 2019).
  • Martin Sandbu, Financial Times journalist and author of The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All (Princeton, 2020).