The Centre is administered in the College of Arts and Law as a unit of the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion. The Centre is a point of contact between Arts and Law and Social Sciences. It has natural affinities with Political Science and International Relations as well as the Institute of Applied Social Studies. The Centre has links with the Medical School, the International Development Department and the Birmingham Business School.
National boundaries matter less and less to the workings of migration, trade, manufacturing, telecommunications, technological innovation, religious solidarity, legal practice, political organization, even the things many people eat at home. In some ways the world is getting smaller and more uniform; in other ways it is breaking up. Weak states in some parts of the world compete for authority with warlords; national groups call for secession and independence. Even where the world is breaking up, however, there is more international awareness of it than there has been before. The processes of globalization affect everyone.
The Centre for the Study of Global Ethics was founded in 2001, and was the first of its kind in the UK. It was set up to address the practical and theoretical issues raised by globalization. We are multidisciplinary in approach, as we believe that issues which we face today cannot be solved within, e.g. economics, politics or philosophy alone. Beyond that, we are pluralistic in outlook, as we do not believe that a single value framework or belief system is adequate to every problem; teaching and research in the Centre involve people from several departments, and several cultural backgrounds. Everyone works in some way as a practitioner, or is keen to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Activists and policy makers are taken to be as crucial to the study of global ethics as academics.
What is Global Ethics?
Global ethics deals with the moral questions that arise from globalization. Some of the most pressing of these arise from the great systematic disparities of wealth, health, longevity, security, and freedom between the North and South. What obligations have individuals and governments in the North to improve the lives of people in the South? How might international trading arrangements be made fairer? How might military intervention be better regulated? How might the local tyrannies of warlords or criminal gangs be undone? How far should international institutions have power to make decisions that go against the interests of governments and individuals in the North? What role does corruption play in maintaining an unjust world? How far are local elites in the South culpable for the extremes of the North/South divide? How far must the ways of life of individuals change for the sake of the worst off elsewhere, or for the sake of reversing climate change?
Other questions arise from the way in which it is becoming easier for people to become exposed to the cultural differences that aren't being wiped out by globalization. Can people learn from one another about how to live? Recent research into comparative levels of happiness in different parts of the world suggests that happiness is not confined to, or even more marked in, the North. Apathy and isolation are often found in places that are democratic and open. Serious religious observance is an important part of life in very large numbers of countries. Are non-religious people in the West somehow blind to an important source of value? These questions, too, belong to Global Ethics. On the other hand, the internationalisation of e.g. civil and political rights standards that are longest lived in the North and West has often been welcomed elsewhere.
