We often hear that Covid-19 has served as a perverse diagnostic, lighting up all the fault-lines in our society-especially fault-lines of gender and color, nation and class. We don’t hear enough, however, about the social system that generates those fault lines, even though it’s the same system that brought us the virus in the first place and is blocking our efforts to deal with it. In this lecture, Professor Nancy Fraser shifts the focus to that systemic level. What the pandemic actually diagnoses, Professor Fraser claims, is the deep-seated dysfunctionality of capitalism. Professor Fraser explains this thesis first, by proposing a new account of what capitalism is, and second, by applying that account to the present crisis. The result is to portray the Covid pandemic as a perfect storm that discloses all our system’s multiple, intertwined contradictions--ecological, political, social, and economic.
This talk is sponsored by The Donald C. Samuel Fund for Economics and Politics.
Social Science Colloquium Series: The Covid Pandemic - A Perfect Storm of Capitalist Irrationality and Injustice by Professor Nancy Fraser
Virtual Online
Open to the public
/ Thursday