Society, Culture, and Sustainable Development in Ibero-America

Conference Overview

The question of development has been central to the Ibero-American debate concerning the relationship between economy and society. The current discussion of its different definitions have taken a definite turn in the bend due to their scope to other spheres rather than just economic growth, a concept to which it has been confined almost exclusively for several decades .

Despite the initial confusion between its fundamental goals and the means of achieving them, the concept of development has evolved significantly from its beginnings, when it focused on material growth, through paradigms of human and sustainable development. The concentration on extra-personal indicators such as income, wealth, and GDP mistakenly considered these means of attaining development as its goal. The ultimate goal of development, however, concerns the quality of life, how people feel about themselves, what they desire to be and to do. The pursuit of a better life, according to Amartya Sen, consists in freedom and reasons to celebrate. Indeed, one must be free in order to be able to have a good life.

As such, new approaches to development allow us to understand man and society as part of a complex global system. As a part of specific contexts, it is thus necessary to consider the relationships between the different components of development as well as how the concepts of quality of life and individual well-being relate to it at both aggregate and local levels.

Despite theoretical advances in the conceptualization of development in its broader sense, however, many Ibero-American countries continue to subscribe to a model of development based on the exploitation of natural resources. This approach generates significant negative externalities on the environment and human health, restricting both people’s freedom and their capabilities. This model based on the exploitation of natural resources and raw materials is unsustainable and constitutes a major constraint to human development. Thus, there is a need for change that will enable our society to reconcile the structures of production with the theoretical advances that allow for a sustainable future. Some fields, such as ecology, anthropology, and sociology, have made significant contributions to the concept of development and to the valuation of cultural, environmental, and natural assets, lending weight and demonstrating the pertinence of the enjoyment of nature and its preservation, the understanding of the culture of a given territory, the lifestyles of local populations, and justice in the recognition of people’s rights.

The III RISE will thus be brought to incorporate discussions about development in the framework of the pursuit of more balanced, just, and sustainable societies. The event will provide a space for reflection on the economic growth of nations and its relationship to human well-being and the environment; it will also provide an occasion to analyze its relevance, incidence, and social scope in a sustainable development context.

Academic Areas of Discussion (Networks)

1. The State of the Art in Socio-Economics
2. Globalization and Human Development
3. Environmental Governance, Social Movements, and Developmentli>
4. Regulation, Supervision, and the Financial System
5. Demographic Horizon, Labor Relations, and Well-Being
6. Sustainable Development, Climate Change, and Environmental Balance
7. Culture, Development, and Creative Economy
8. Insularity, Sovereignty, and Territorial Dynamics
9. Peace, Post-Conflict, and Democracy
10. Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Competitiveness, and Development
11. Tourism and Development
12. Regional and Urban Development

Featured Speakers

Alberto Abello Vives

President of the Luis Angel Arango Public Library – the biggest in Colombia – and member of the Banco de la República Central Bank in Bogota, Vives was dean of the School of Economics and Business at the Universidad Tecnológica de Bolivar, where he created the university’s Masters program in Development and Culture as well as the Ibero-American Research Laboratory on Culture and Development.

Vives is also an economist and cultural manager whose work focuses on the Caribbean. Author of The Stranded Island among other books, scientific articles, and publications, he spent two decades heading the Caribbean Observatory, one of the region’s main economic think tanks.

María Ángeles Duran

Sociologist María Ángeles Duran is a recognized pioneer in social research on unpaid work, the social situation of women and their socio-labor and family environments, the economics of health, and inequality in the use of time.

In 1982, she was the first woman to obtain a Sociology chair in Spain. She was one of the first investigators in the Spanish academic world to write sociological works from a feminist perspective. In 1979, Duran founded and served as director of the Seminar on Women’s Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid, the first university institute for Women’s Studies in Spain. In 2002, she received the Pascual Madoz National Research Prize in Economic and Legal Sciences.

Though Duran retired in 2012, she continues her research activity at the Center for Human and Social Sciences (CSIC) as an ad honorem researcher.

She has written over two hundred publications on unpaid work, time use, and health.

Michael Piore

Piore is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984.

He attended Harvard University and received a B.A. in Economics in 1962 and a Ph.D. in 1966. He has been a faculty member at MIT since 1966 and has previously served as a consultant to the US Department of Labor between 1968 and 1970 and labor consultant to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico between 1970 and 1972.

He is best known for developing the concepts of the internal labor market and the dual labor market hypothesis and, more recently, for his work on the transition from mass production to flexible specialization. Piore’s work has focused on the labor market and industrial relations, including low-income labor markets, the impact of technological change on work, migration, labor market segmentation, and the relationship between the labor market, business strategy, and industrial organization.

Piore has served as a member of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics’ Executive Council, the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association (1990–1995), and the International Labor Organization’s Institute for Labor Studies Governing Board (1990–1996). He has worked with many other international organizations, foreign governments, U.S. government agencies, state governments, and nonprofit organizations including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the AFL-CIO, and the Social Science Research Council. He holds a Doctor Honoris Causa from Lille University of Science and Technology.

Eduardo Posada-Carbó

Professor of the History and Politics of Latin America, Posada-Carbó completed an MPhil in Latin American Studies at St. Antony’s College and then a DPhil in Modern History at the University of Oxford. He held a succession of posts in several British universities, including a Senior Lectureship in History at the University of London’s Institute of Latin American Studies.

Posada-Carbó’s current research is mostly focused on nineteenth century history, but he has also written on contemporary Colombia, paying special attention to the problems of violence and prospects for peace. He explored this subject in his book La nación soñada, as well as in various publications on the politics of language in the Colombian conflict, including an article in the Latin American Research Review, and various monographs commissioned by the Fundación Ideas para la Paz.

He has edited many books, including Origins of Democracy in the Americas: The Formation of Electoral Institutions in the Nineteenth-Century (with J. Samuel Valenzuela), forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, and Liberalismo y poder. Latinoamérica en el siglo XIX (with Iván Jaksic). He is currently directing a five-volume history of Colombia, to be included in a collection on the history of the Iberian world, promoted by the Fundación Mapfre in Madrid.

Josep Borrell

Former President of the European Parliament and Professor of Economic Analysis at the Complutense University of Madrid, of which he been Chair since 1981, Josep Borrell has equally held positions as Spanish Secretary of State for Finance (1984-1991), Spanish Minister for Public Works, Transport, Environment, Housing and Telecommunications (1991-1996), and Member of the Spanish Parliament by the constituency of Barcelona (1986-2003). Further, Borrell has also been Member of the European Convention (2002 – 2003), President of the European Parliament (July 2004-January 2007), President of the Euro Mediterranean (Euromed) Parliamentary Assembly (2006), and President of the European University Institute (2010- 2012). He is the founder and first co–President of the EuroLatinAmerican (Eurolat) Parliamentary Assembly (2006) as well as Chair on European Economic Integration at Madrid University’s Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales.