Introduction

Explorations of Fairness

A Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Exploratory Workshop

Fairness extends beyond process and outcomes; it engages our basic norms of how to interact with one another.  We cannot expect to become global citizens without understanding how fairness informs social, political and legal choices.  We need to know how fairness is culturally, linguistically, socially and economically formed, including what is recognized and what is discounted.  This exploratory workshop was aimed at advancing our collective notions of fairness by encouraging participating scholars to look beyond the lens of their own discipline to find innovative and deeper understandings of fairness that might inform their scholarship. Scholars and community members from the arts, social sciences, law, business, sciences, visual arts, and performing arts focused their attention on a wide range of topics, including the normative and ethical dimensions of fairness, fairness and economic advantage, fairness in music, movement and the arts, and the comparative conceptions of fairness, family and citizenship.

"Explorations of Fairness" was a Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Exploratory Workshop funded by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Exploratory Workshop program at the University of British Columbia awarded to Dr. Janis Sarra, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia.

This Workshop was part of an interdisciplinary, multi-stage initiative at the Peter Wall Institute led by Dr. Sarra that explored the basic values of fairness. In December Dr. Sarra held a jazz concert and discussion, “Jazz as the Medium: Informing Notions of Fairness.” In the spring of 2011 she directed a “Dance Atelier” on “Articulations of Fairness Through Dance, Dialogue, Space” and chaired a public forum she organized, titled “Creating New Landscapes in Notions of Fairness.”