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Upcoming conference to explore the 'challenges of affluence' in a global world

By Amy Gage
February 18, 2002

How should we, as individuals and as a nation, deal with America's affluence? What role should the United States play in a world whose countries and peoples increasingly are linked? What are the challenges of affluence post-Sept. 11?

Those are among the provocative questions that will be addressed by faculty, students and visiting lecturers at St. Olaf College Feb. 22 and 23 during the second annual Globalization and Social Responsibility conference. The event, which focuses this year on "The Challenges of Affluence," will feature three keynote speakers as well as six discussion sessions that examine "The High Cost of Sport," "Schools and Partnerships in Urban Communities" and "The Impact of Globalization on First and Third World Workers," among other topics. The conference is free and open to the public.

The theme of this year's conference began to take shape after the three-pronged terrorist attack on the United States last September. "We wanted a topic that allowed for discussion of what happened to the United States and the world without making it a conference just about that," says Christopher Chiappari, conference co-chair and an assistant professor of anthropology at St. Olaf.

Among the distinguished participants in the conference are Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow Ramon Daubon, Ph.D., a senior associate at the Kettering Foundation who has worked with the Organization of American States (OAS), the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Ford Foundation in Chile. Sustainable development and civic participation in development are among Daubon's areas of expertise. He will participate in classes at St. Olaf throughout the week of Feb. 18 and kick off the conference at 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22, with the address "Do No Harm: the Ethical Challenge of Development Assistance."

Daubon also will chair an OAS meeting by teleconference from the college on Friday from 7 to 9:30 a.m. with leaders in five Latin American cities. An economics class taught by Associate Professor Steven Soderlind will participate in the teleconference.

Other keynote speakers include Kathy Kelly, founder of Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization that aims to end U.S. sanctions against Iraq. Kelly will speak at 9 a.m. Saturday on "Gender and Inequality in a Global Context," examining what she calls the "consequences of directing funds toward military and defense spending rather than toward meeting human needs." Craig Murphy, a professor and chair of political science at Wellesley College who focuses on inequality across lines of class, gender, region, ethnicity and race, will speak Friday at 7 p.m. on "Political Consequences of the New Inequality."

Faculty members in the social and applied sciences at St. Olaf - including sociology, anthropology, family studies, economics, political science, education, nursing and social work - created the first Globalization and Social Responsibility conference in 2001. "We are the disciplines that can provide an explanation for the global and social challenges that confront our world," says Samiha Sidhom Peterson, a professor of sociology and associate dean at the college.

"Very few people talk about the challenges of affluence," she adds. "The majority of people in the United States are warm, fed and have more than they need, and the excluded and disgruntled in the world are coming to resent it. Increasingly there are voices objecting to our influence. We want to provide a forum to discuss that."

Peterson has a painting in her office at St. Olaf that illustrates a larger point conference organizers hope to make. A person of indeterminate gender and ethnicity, with light brown skin, is bent over in a field working with his or her hands - "the way most of the people in the world work," she explains. The sun is a globe, with the face of Africa rather than the United States turned toward observers.

The goal, says conference co-organizer Chiappari, is to help students and participants move past the notion that "global" always means "foreign." "The whole world is global, not just Malaysia or Indonesia," he explains. "We want to relate the global to the local. St. Olaf is a place of privilege, where we have the luxury of being educated. Not everyone who goes here is rich, but we are affluent as a country. We hope to urge participants at this conference to think of themselves as individuals, as a group, as members of a community and a country, and ultimately, as citizens of the world."

For more information on the Globalization and Social Responsibility conference, call the Office of Conferences and Events at St. Olaf College, (507) 646-3043 or visit the conference web site, www.stolaf.edu/other/global2002. The event, which is free, will begin Friday, Feb. 22, at 4 p.m., and continue Saturday, Feb. 23, from 9 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. Pre-registration is required for a box lunch on Saturday. The cost is $5.

St. Olaf College, a national leader among liberal arts institutions, prepares students to become responsible citizens of the world, fostering the development of mind, body and spirit. It is a residential college located in Northfield, Minn., and affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The college is recognized as one of the nation's best values in higher education, providing personalized instruction and diverse learning environments. More than two-thirds of its students participate in international studies.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.