Date: 25Feb 2022
Globalization has lifted millions out of poverty. Globalization is a weapon the rich use to exploit the poor. Globalization builds bridges across national boundaries. Globalization fuels the populism and great-power competition that is tearing the world apart. When it comes to the politics of free trade and open borders, the camps are dug in, producing a kaleidoscope of claims and counterclaims, unlikely alliances, and unexpected foes. But what exactly are we fighting about? And how might we approach these issues more productively? Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp cut through the confusion with an indispensable survey of the interests, logics, and ideologies driving these intractable debates, which lie at the heart of so much political dispute and decision making. The authors expertly guide us through six competing narratives about the virtues and vices of globalization: the old establishment view that globalization benefits everyone (win–win), the pessimistic belief that it threatens us all with pandemics and climate change (lose–lose), along with various rival accounts that focus on specific winners and losers, from China to America’s Rust Belt. Instead of picking sides, Six Faces of Globalization gives all these positions their due, showing how each deploys sophisticated arguments and compelling evidence. Both globalization’s boosters and detractors will come away with their eyes opened. By isolating the fundamental value conflicts—growth versus sustainability, efficiency versus social stability—driving disagreement and showing where rival narratives converge, Roberts and Lamp provide a holistic framework for understanding current debates. In doing so, they showcase a more integrative way of thinking about complex problems.
Speaker: Anthea Roberts is Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at Australian National University and author of the prizewinning Is International Law International? In 2019, she was named the world’s leading international law scholar by League of Scholars.
Nicolas Lamp is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, at Queen’s University. In 2020, he was cross-appointed to the Queen’s School of Policy Studies. He also serves as the Academic Director of the International Law Programs, an eight-week summer course that Queen’s Law offers at the Bader International Study Centre at Herstmonceux castle in England during the summer term. Since 2019, he has also been the Director of the Annual Queen’s Institute on Trade Policy, a professional training course for Canadian trade officials that is hosted by the Queen’s School of Policy Studies.
Discussants: Richard Cullen is a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He was previously a Professor in the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He completed his LLB at Melbourne University Law School in 1982 and his doctorate at Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada in 1986. He is admitted to practise law in Victoria, Hong Kong, England and Wales and worked with a major law firm in Melbourne for two years. Before coming to tertiary teaching, Richard worked as a manager with CSIRO.
Jedidiah Kroncke is an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, joining the faculty in August of 2018. He currently teaches property, equity and trusts, as well as courses in common law reasoning for civil law students. Previously, he was a professor at FGV Sao Paulo School of Law, and before this he was the Senior Fellow at the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School.
Chair:
Dr. Angela Zhang, Director of the Centre for Chinese Law at the University of Hong Kong
