Martin Gives Keynote at 9th Asia Future Forum
Cathie Jo Martin, Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor of Political Science at Boston University, gave a keynote at the 9th Asia Future Forum in Seoul, South Korea on October 30-31, 2018.
The conference theme was “Reshaping the Future: How to Tackle Inequality” and was sponsored by the Hankyoreh Media Group and the Hankyoreh Economy and Society Research Institute. Other keynote speakers included Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics) and Richard Wilkinson (University of Nottingham). Martin discussed employers’ support for social investment in the Nordic countries and lessons of these experiences for Korea. She also gave talks at the Economic, Social and Labor Council and Yonsei University.
Martin is a Professor of Political Science, Director of the Center for the Study of Europe, President of the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, and former chair of the Council for European Studies. Her book with Duane Swank, The Political Construction of Business Interests (Cambridge 2012) received the APSA Politics and History book award, and she has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Russell Sage Foundation, among others.
Martin’s most recent article (“Imagine All the People,” World Politics, July 2018) uses machine learning processes to analyze large corpora of British and Danish literature and to uncover the deep cultural roots of education reform. British literary narratives highlight benefits of schooling for individual self-growth (for upper/middle classes). The individualistic cultural slant to British stories have justified the neglect of marginal youth, because celebration of those conquering challenges with self-initiative make it easier to blame those who fail and to dismiss the youth that are left behind. Danish narratives justify schooling as a social investment to strengthen society and have driven Danish investments in educational innovations. Neglect of low-skill youth has been viewed as a waste of societal resources and a threat to social fabric. High socioeconomic equality has been a fortuitous but felicitous side effect of this mandate to educate all the people. Learn more about Cathie Jo Martin here.