The Future of Slavery and Emancipation (2023-2025)

The Working Group on the Future of Slavery and Emancipation explores the possibility that contemporary efforts to understand and end slavery have operated within an era that is drawing to a close. This possibility raises two questions: What is the future of slavery and emancipation? and: How to prepare for that future?

Answering this question requires attention to profound change across three domains. First, changes related to Energy and Climate are transforming where humans live, how economies operate, which countries are vulnerable to crisis, and which communities are vulnerable to exploitation. Second, innovation related to Science and Technology is transforming what kinds of actors are subject to regulation and deserving of rights (e.g., social robots and general artificial intelligence) as well as what kinds of meaningful remunerative work will be available to humans. Third, changes related to local and global Governance are transforming the means by which rules and rights are made and enforced, especially through the rise of authoritarianism and challenges to democracy and good governance.

This project contributes to emerging discourse on the future, and exploratory work along these lines can be found in Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick’s recent working paper on “The Future of Human Rights”. This project also draws from emerging communities of practice focused on experimenting with new types of collaboration, including Imre Szemen’s Univ Toronto-based initiative, After Oil, the artist’s Siegrun Appelt’s Daylight Academy, and the California-based artist collective Art Builds.