Fair Share? Intergenerational Justice in Transnational Perspective

Call for Papers

How do societies distribute resources, risks, obligations, and responsibilities across time and across different cultural contexts? In recent decades, questions concerning pensions, healthcare, public debt, inheritance, demographic changes, and the future of the welfare state have been increasingly framed in generational terms. Environmental problems such as climate change, nuclear waste, and resource depletion have likewise sharpened debates about obligations toward future generations, while historical responsibility is often negotiated through ideas of generational transmission. Yet neither “generation” nor “intergenerational justice” are neutral or self-evident categories. Claims made in the name of generations can make certain inequalities and obligations visible, but they may also reorganize older conflicts over class, gender, race, citizenship, property, welfare, or political responsibility. In debates over welfare reform, for example, claims about fairness between generations have at times been used to challenge public provision, redefine state responsibility, and advocate for private solutions. Rather than taking generational conflicts or solidarity for granted, this conference asks how particular problems came to be defined as questions between generations, by which actors, and with what consequences.

This conference brings together historians and social scientists to explore intergenerational justice as a historical and interdisciplinary problem. It focuses especially on Germany, the United States, and Japan — three affluent, democratic, aging societies with very different welfare models — where demographic change, family structures, inheritance regimes, environmental politics, and postwar legacies have shaped different understandings of obligations across generations. 

We are particularly interested in contributions exploring topics such as:

• How have concepts of generation, generational equity, solidarity, and responsibility changed over time in the United States, Japan, and Germany?
• What role do culture and history play in perceptions of fairness? Do different social classes have diverging understandings of generational justice? What role do social norms and values play in how individuals understand their obligations to other generations? 
• Who has invoked generational categories (experts, businesses, the media, interest groups, and social movements), and to what political, social, or economic ends? 
• How have pensions, healthcare, welfare, public debt, and demographic change come to be defined as intergenerational problems or conflicts? 
• How have inheritance, property, care, and family wealth structured relations between generations? How have economic growth, stagnation, or crisis of the different countries reshaped these relations?
• How have climate change, nuclear waste, and other long-term risks generated claims and obligations toward future generations?
• How have environmental and social burdens been distributed across generations?
• How have responsibility, liability, and the costs of postwar repair been assigned and impact the public’s understanding of intergenerational justice?
• How are memory, guilt, responsibility, and historical legacies transmitted and renegotiated across generations?
   

A central aim of the conference is to connect fields that have often developed separately, including the histories of welfare states, families and inheritance, demography, environmental politics, and memory. As we aim to examine how generational concepts travel, change, and acquire political force in different contexts, we welcome single-country studies, but we are especially interested in comparative and transnational contributions.

The in-person conference will be hosted by the GHI Pacific Office at UC Berkeley and is part of a conference series on histories of social justice at the GHI Pacific Office at UC Berkeley. Proposals, which should include a paper title, an abstract of no more than 250 words, and a short CV, must be submitted online by January 22, 2027. Please contact Heike Friedman (friedman@ghi-dc.org) if you have problems submitting your information. Decisions will be sent out by mid-February 2027. Accommodation will be arranged by the conference organizers for one presenter per paper. Participants are responsible for making their own travel arrangements. Travel and accommodation subsidies are available upon request for selected scholars, particularly junior scholars and those from institutions with limited resources who might not otherwise be able to attend the conference. There is no registration fee.