Friday, May 20, 2011

CPSA Conference (Waterloo 2011)


Yesterday I returned from 4 days at the CPSA conference at WLU in Waterloo. This year Loren and I were the panel chairs for political theory, which meant we had to organize and oversee the theory submissions and panels. It was a very enjoyable conference, with theory talks on topics as varied as the family and future generations, ancient Greek political thought, trade and taxes, federalism and territory and a session on this new book. We are grateful to the sponsors who helped fund the theory program- ACUNS, WLU and the CPSA.

We had a special workshop on "Global Justice and Global Governance" which spanned the 3 days of talks. The final workshop session featured the plenary talks by Virginia and Simon. We are very grateful to both of them for making the long trek to the conference and for the very stimulating presentations on, respectively, the ethic of care (as it pertains to international law) and the fair distribution of green house gas emissions.

Other highlights from the conference included the conference's plenary talk by Carole Pateman (on participatory democracy) on Monday, and Tuesday's conference dinner at KW's Concordia Club, which included a great schnitzel dinner and keg tapping ceremony.

Cheers,
Colin