Registration: 8 am  -  at the Laurel Point Inn, outside the Salon ABCD.

Welcome: 8:45

Session 1: 9:00 - 10:45 am

Antinomies of Recognition

Speakers

• Courtney Jung: Dept of Political Science, The New School of Social Research, New York
• Nikolas Kompridis: Department of Philosophy, York University

Discussant

• Avigail Eisenberg: Dept of Political Science, University of Victoria

This panel will deal with the sometime ambivalence of recognition, under which subaltern groups achieve recognition and accommodation, but often in a manner that also serves to define them in ways that are not wholly within their control.  This relational definition of the group is not necessarily objectionable, but it may become so if there are dramatic power imbalances between the groups, or if the recognized community is poorly placed to engage in its own self-organization. The politics of recognition is, in other words, in uneasy relationship with the idea of self-determination.  This panel will place those tensions on the table, drawing on specific situations in which the challenge arises.

Session 2: 11:00 am - 12:45 pm

Preconditions of Recognition

Speakers

• Glen Coulthard: PhD Candidate, Dept of Political Science, University of Victoria
• Rinku Lamba: Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow, European University Institute, Florence
• Michel Seymour: Faculté de philosophie, Université de Montréal

Building on the first panel, this panel asks whether there are particular preconditions to effective recognition.  Is there a degree of self-organization, a minimum of de facto autonomy, moral requirements of self-confidence or self-knowledge, or material (resource) requirements that are essential to effective recognition?

Session 3: 2:00 - 3:45 pm

Normative Presumptions of Recognition

Speakers

• Miranda Johnson: PhD Candidate, Dept of History, University of Chicago
• Jocelyn Maclure: Faculté de philosophie, Université Laval
• Ghislain Otis: Faculté de droit, Université Laval

This panel examines the extent to which recognition should be or inevitably is associated with particular normative requirements.  In other words, are specific normative requirements (requirements on the recognized group, but also perhaps on the recognizing group) built into the very interplay of recognition – requirements of participation, an obligation to enter negotiations, or the observance of certain internal rights and processes, for example?  To what extent are normative requirements imposed by the will of the recognizing party?  To what extent are they presupposed by the relationship?  Is there sufficient justification for those requirements?  We expect that this panel will also serve to define what precisely we should mean by “recognition.”

Session 4: 4:00 - 5:45 pm

Competition Between Recognitions

Speakers

• Geneviève Nootens: Chaire de recherche du Canada sur la démocratie et la souveraineté Sciences humaines, Université du Quebéc à Chicoutimi
• Daniel Salée: Department of Political Science, Concordia University, Montreal and University of New Brunswick, Saint John (2007-2008)
• Daniel Weinstock: Chaire de recherche du Canada en éthique et philosophie politique, Professeur, Département de philosophie; Université de Montréal

Many of the challenges of recognition involve the relative recognition accorded different groups.  Groups seek differential recognition, or are acutely sensitive to the suspicion that they may be receiving less recognition than some other group.  Yet the range of possible group definitions is such that it is impossible to accord precisely the same recognition to all groups, at least not without evacuating the very significance of recognition.  In what ways do these competitions emerge?  On what basis should they be resolved?