BULLYING IN schools, obesity and mental health problems are all symptoms of extremes of inequality in society, a Dublin conference has heard.
Prof Richard Wilkinson, co-author of The Spirit Level, told the conference at UCD that inequality corroded the moral fabric of society. The two-day conference, which finished yesterday, was organised by the university’s Equality World Initiative (EWI) and coincided with the 20th anniversary of UCD’s Equality Studies Centre
Prof Wilkinson, who addressed the conference by video-link as volcanic ash had disrupted his flight, said there were higher levels of anxiety, stress and depression in unequal society, and a sense of a lack of security. In more equal societies, there is more trust between people. He pointed out life was better for the well-off in more equal societies than it was for those in less equal ones, with better public services, lower levels of depression and longer life-expectancy. For example, a Greek child had a better life-expectancy at birth than an American child, though Greece had half the gross domestic product per head of the US.
EWI chairwoman Prof Kathleen Lynch said the network came into being when the European Education and Research Council tendered for a research programme. The programme included a transfer of knowledge, whereby scholars came from other institutions to UCD, and UCD academics would visit other institutions.
One of the scholars who visited UCD as part of the programme is Prof Martha Albertson Fineman from the law department of Emory University. She is the author of books on the family, law and society, and the founder and director of the Feminism and Legal Theory project.
She criticised the idea of citizens as autonomous individuals, advocating instead the idea of the “vulnerable subject”. She pointed out everyone is dependent at some stage, and most people at some point have caring responsibilities.
She said we should build social policy and law around the idea of the vulnerable subject, and use it to redefine and expand ideas about state responsibility towards individuals and institutions.
Prof Lynch stressed the need for synergy between social science and law, and for dialogue between academics and social and community activists.