From 2021 to 2025 I will be conducting an ARC (Australian Research Council) Future Fellowship project entitled "Rewriting the Social Contract: Ecology, Technology, Extremism".The project aims to develop a new approach to understanding the purpose and power of social contracts: implicit agreements among members of a society to cooperate for mutual benefit. The post-war prosperity of Europe, Australia and the U.S.A. has relied on a robust social contract, but it is under increasing strain today from new technological, environmental and socio-political realities. Using techniques from philosophy and social theory, this project seeks to examine the main pressures on the social contract today, and to propose how it can be renewed and strengthened.The posts below explore some of the issues and thinkers relevant to this project.
