Normative Politics in an Age of Environmental and Digital Transformation

Normative political thought is typically focused on justice. If justice is about the ethical distribution of benefits and burdens in society, then a digitalized, sustainable world offers significant problems. While its boosters promise a more sustainable economy and society, there is limited empirical support for this promise, at least at present. Moreover, with digital lifeworlds come new venues for political conflict, venues that may exacerbate tensions over the distribution of these benefits and burdens. This conflict may amount to a digital threat to democracy, buttressed by phenomena like echo chambers. But the digital also offers new routes to participatory and/or deliberative advances in democratic practice, including smaller scale modes traditionally favoured by greens. Imagining a just political community post-transformation requires engaging with both the empirical and normative components of these challenges.

This workshop aims to solidify visions of what this post-transformation, just political community may look like. To do so, it will bring the scientific and empirical knowledge of the RIFS Digitalisation and Sustainability Transformations Research Group’s into dialogue with the politics and normative theory expertise of a select group of mostly Berlin-based social scientists. By utilizing an atypical, dialogic approach to the workshop – inspired by the unconference model – the workshop hopes to enhance knowledge exchange and maximise the possibility of fruitful collaboration opportunities being discovered.

Invitation only

Venue: RIFS Potsdam, Villa

Organised by Research Fellow Dr. Michael Keary, in collaboration with the RIFS Fellow Program and the Digitalisation and Sustainability Transformations junior research group.