The Edmund Rice Institute for Social Justice (ERISJ) is hosting an event from 10am to 5pm in Fremantle on 4 September that will focus on how the global economy affects mankind’s wellbeing and opportunities for positive change.
The new intensive will be presented by University of Western Australia Business School Associate Professor Rob Lambert.
ERISJ Director David Freeman said the Institute decided to run this event because how economic systems are organised are key determinants of human wellbeing.
According to Catholic social teaching, the economy must exist to serve humans and the society not the other way round, Mr Freeman said. Catholic social teaching focuses on the primacy of human wellbeing and dignity.
At the intensive, Prof Lambert will explain some of the consequences for family life of global economic restructuring and focus on how individuals and families can take positive action to improve their wellbeing.
Participants will gain a deeper understanding of what global free markets are doing to individuals, families and societies; the nature of corporate restructuring of work, and its social and psychological impacts on families and communities.
The event will also examine basic analytic techniques of ‘political economy’ necessary for understanding these changes; the values underlying these changes, and how they might be ethically assessed.
Participants will also be shown how to imagine alternative models of work, and the process of realising such change.
Professor Lambert specialises in labour studies and is co-author of award-winning book Grounding Globalisation: Labour in the Age of Insecurity (Oxford, Blackwell, 2008). The book’s highly readable critique of the free market economy identifies destructive impacts for the environment, society, families and individuals.
Prof Lambert is also founder and coordinator of the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights. This 20-year-old movement connects democratic trade unions across 15 countries and four continents.
He has a background as a South African activist, was National Secretary of the South African Young Christian Workers and advisor to the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference before coming to Perth.
The intensive is one of 11 run throughout the year by the ERISJ. While this is the first time the institute has run this subject as part of its social justice programme, it hopes to include the intensive again next year.
Tickets to this event start from $25 for unwaged/student and go up to $150 for government/corporate). To book, phone 9432 2400, email: admin@erisj.org.au, or register online at www.erisj.org.au.