By affirming the principle of the people’s sovereignty through a community of free subjects, advocating the liberation of the individual through education, and denouncing the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, Jean-Jacques Rousseau helped to set the coordinates of modern politics. His thinking could not have been closer to today’s concerns. The climate crisis, a lack of equal opportunity, erosion of democracy through technological change, social exclusion, the restriction of individual and collective freedoms in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic: at a time when our society is threatened, it is urgent that we invent a new paradigm for tomorrow, a social contract for the 21st century.
We are living in times of great upheaval. Famines, floods, fires, heat waves: the catastrophic effects of climate change threaten our very existence. Poverty, war, violence, and discrimination continue to deprive millions of their most basic rights to health, food, security, and education. With the rise of populism and of cultural isolationism, more and more people are turning away from the values of trust and solidarity that bind humanity together. The democratic challenges, present and future, are certainly numerous.
At a time when politics no longer seem to be about the people, displaced both from above (by globalization, climate change, etc.) and below (through individualism or communitarianism),
when young people experience all sorts of specific political challenges (from the natural world, sexual identity, or animal nature),
when traditional places of engagement and democratic process appear to have been deserted, there is no shortage of political energy. Common causes are coming together. Forms of associative engagement are multiplying and diversifying. In this period, with our decaying connectedness to nature and deep democratic tensions, yet strengthened by the momentum of mobilization and the spreading global effects of its spread, there is a need to reflect on conditions for collective liberatory action.
This international, interdisciplinary competition aims to promote projects that examine the Social Contract in light of contemporary crises and draft a design for to- morrow. By investigating avenues for a new social order serving the general interest, this competition should facilitate a collective rethinking of ecology, public health, participatory democracy, social justice, and any other key global factors, creating substantial impetus for a new model of society. Based on a theme crucial to Rousseau – contract, obligation, common good, public interest, citizenship, amour des lois, governmentality, property, security, corruption, secularism, etc. –, – entries to this competition, individual or collective, may come in any form, using any medium.
In 1750, Jean-Jacques Rousseau won a prize from the Academy of Dijon for his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. This was far from an anecdotal occurrence. The intellectual practice of competitions had exploded in the 18th century, to the degree that it provided an important forum for critical exchange in order to, according to the formula of the time, increase the mass of general ideas. As it increasingly diversified over the course of the century, the academic competition constituted a formidable intellectual forum: it was both innovative, encouraging the public use of criticism, and meritocratic, as the projects submitted were judged anonymously. Above all, the competition circuit’s social components, in their openness, were radically different from those of the scholarly institutions of the Ancien Régime. Many women and craftsmen would thus participate, and even peasants, with varying degrees of literacy, would take part at times. These groups were generally excluded from the Republic of Letters.
Members of the jury have been selected for their expertise in the fields of social and political sciences, art and culture, architecture and urban planning, education, law and economics, public health, natural and environmental sciences, and gender studies.
Professor James Arvanitakis is the Director of the Forrest Research Foundation based at the University of Western Australia. He brings together the five Western Australian-based universities to attract world class research to the state and confront the world’s grand challenges. He is an award-winning educator, cultural researcher, and media commentator with 20-year experience in the higher education sector having also had successful careers in finance and the not-for profit sector. As an educator and researcher, James was the driving force behind several innovative programs at Western Sydney University including “The Academy”.
James is a Fulbright alumnus, having spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming as the Milward L Simpson Fellow.
In 2021, he was appointed the inaugural Patron of Diversity Arts Australia in recognition of his commitment to promoting a cultural sector that reflects the rich diversity of Australia. In 2022 he founded Respectful Disagreements, a brave spaces project that promotes the lost art of civility in political disagreement as well as the educational power of discomfort.
He is a regular contributor to debates on complex and controversial topics on ABC News 24 and The Drum and has published over 100 articles. James is a Fulbright alumnus, having spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming as a Milward L Simpson Fellow. In 2021, he was named the first Patron of Diversity Arts Australia in recognition of his commitment to a cultural sector that reflects Australia’s rich diversity. In 2022, he founded Respectful Disagreements, a courageous spaces project that promotes the lost art of civility in political disagreements as well as the educational power of discomfort.
Professor James Arvanitakis is the Director of the Forrest Research Foundation based at the University of Western Australia. He brings together the five Western Australian-based universities to attract world class research to the state and confront the world’s grand challenges. He is an award-winning educator, cultural researcher, and media commentator with 20-year experience in the higher education sector having also had successful careers in finance and the not-for profit sector. As an educator and researcher, James was the driving force behind several innovative programs at Western Sydney University including “The Academy”.
James is a Fulbright alumnus, having spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming as the Milward L Simpson Fellow. In 2021, he was appointed the inaugural Patron of Diversity Arts Australia in recognition of his commitment to promoting a cultural sector that reflects the rich diversity of Australia. In 2022 he founded Respectful Disagreements, a brave spaces project that promotes the lost art of civility in political disagreement as well as the educational power of discomfort.
Monika Bolliger is a journalist focusing on the Middle East. She holds an MA degree in history, Arabic language and international law from the University of Zurich. From 2012 to 2018 she worked as a Middle East correspondent for the Swiss daily newspaper NZZ. She used to live in the Middle East for a total of 9 years, and was based in
the cities of Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo and Beirut. Her work as a journalist has allowed her to travel the entire MENA region from Iran to Saudi Arabia and Yemen all the way to Algeria and Tunisia. After leaving NZZ, she worked as a freelance journalist and with the Yemeni think tank Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies in the fields of knowledge production and peace building.
She joined the foreign desk of Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading news magazine, in March 2021. Also in 2021, her book »Tripoli – The Middle East Mirrored in a City« was published by Rotpunkt Verlag (in German). Also in 2021, her book Tripoli – The Middle East Mirrored in a City was published by Rotpunkt Verlag (in German).
Dr. Beatriz Botero Arcila is an Assistant Professor of law in the digital information economy at Sciences Po Law School and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Her research and expertise focus on data governance, AI regulation, digital surveillance, and digitization in urban contexts. Beatriz is also co-founder and head of research of The Edgelands Institute an interdisciplinary pop-up institute active in Medellín, Cúcuta, Geneva, and Nairobi. England’s core mission is to help communities redraw their urban social contract in our era of mass urbanization and surveillance. She leads the research and operations teams of the institute.
Corto Fajal is a writer-director with a particular interest in the wilderness and its inhabitants. As an explorer of traditional societies and cultures, he shares his experiences with the general public through his films, but also through photo exhibitions, conferences and soon through his writings. The medium of documentary film is the pretext that allows him to discover different ways of life, other conceptions and perceptions of the world. Each film is an invitation to travel and to be curious, but also to reflect on our societies today. Claiming a certain quality of immersive time, he shared the life of Jon, a nomadic Sami reindeer herder samis above the Arctic Circle, for six years before his film “Jon, face aux vents” was released in theaters in 2011. Then, after three expeditions lasting several months that allowed him to spend almost a year on the island of Tikopia, the film “Jon, face aux vents” was released in theaters in 2018.
Artist and philosopher, Denise Ferreira da Silva is currently professor at Social Justice Institute-GRSJ (Canada) and an adjunct professor at Monash University School of Art, Architecture, and Design (Australia). Her publications include the books: Toward a Global Idea of Race (2007), A Divida Impagavel (2019), Unpayable Debt (2022), Homo Modernus (2022), and (with Paula Chakravartty) Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime (JHUP 2013). She has held visiting positions at the University of Toronto, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University; in 2023, she will hold the International Chair of Contemporary Philosophy of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Paris 8.
Her artwork includes the films Serpent Rain (2016), 4Waters/Deep Implicancy (2018), and Soot Breath/Corpus Infinitum (with Arjuna Neuman) and the relational artistic practices Poethical Readings and Sensing Salon (with Valentina Desideri). She has performed shows and lectures in important artistic spaces, such as the Pompidou Centre (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London, MASP (São Paulo), and MoMa (New York).
She has written for major art events (Liverpool Biennale, 2017; São Paulo Biennale, 2016, Venice Biennale, 2017 and Documenta 14) and published in venues such as Canadian Art, Texte Zur Kunst and E-Flux.
Samia Henni is a historian of built, destroyed and imagined environments. She is a professor at Cornell University. She is the author of the award-winning The Architecture of Counter-Revolution, The French Army in Northern Algeria (gta Verlag, 2017, EN; Éditions B42, 2019, FR), the editor of War Zones (gta papers no. 2, gta Verlag, 2018) and Deserts Are Not Empty (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2022), and the curator of the exhibitions Housing Pharmacology (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020) and Discreet Violence : Architecture and the French War in Algeria (Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, Philadelphia, 2017-21). She received her PhD in architectural history and theory (with distinction, ETH Medal) from ETH Zurich and has taught at Princeton University, ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and the Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design de Genève (HEAD). She has held the Albert Hirschman Chair (2021-22) at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Aix-Marseille University; Visiting Professor (2021) of the Master of Art History in a Global Context at the Institute of Art History, University of Zurich; and Visiting Geddes Fellow (2021) at the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh.
Olumide Idowu is a Nigerian climate change champion. He advocates for environmental consciousness and champions a balanced approach to development and environmental conservation. He is equally passionate about development as he is about climate change and environmental conservation efforts. His conservation work spans various platforms. He has been actively involved in climate change advocacy for the last 12 years and is strategically positioned to engage younger and older generations through his articles, active participation in climate change groups and the use of social media.
Through the years, he has worked with corporates, and the media and managed culturally and nationally diverse teams. He has volunteered in social change initiatives, and mentored and worked as a strategist for various private and public institutions.
Olumide Idowu is the co-founder of the International Climate Change Development Initiative, a non-governmental institution that seeks to grow climate-smart generations across Africa while addressing gaps in development. He is also the Youth Focal Point in Nigeria for the UNDP Small Grant Program, the Youth Lead Author of Global Environmental Outlook (GEO6) & Executive Coordinator for the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change. He is an alumnus of the International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP) to the United State of America and the Atlas Corps Fellow.
Scott Langdon is the CEO of Our Common Home, a Geneva-based international association. Our Common Home promotes the civic participation of all members of society in developing solutions to climate change, particularly those people with more traditional values who feel a deep attachment to place, tradition, family, and nation and who, until now, have been left out of the climate change conversation. The work is driven by a desire to see climate change be a non-polarizing topic and the love of the environment, something that brings people back together.
Before launching Our Common Home, Scott led the Purpose Climate Lab in New York. Running strategic communications and public campaigns to highlight energy security, air pollution, and conservation issues in the US, Brazil, India, and Kenya.
Early in his career, Scott worked in British politics, where he served as director of the Labour Party’s general secretary’s office and as an advisor on the Labour Party’s policy review prior to the 2015 election.
Aromar Revi is the founding Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) India’s prospective Institution of Eminence and interdisciplinary national University. Over a dozen years, he has built IIHS into one of the world’s leading education, research, training, advisory and implementation-support institutions located in the global south, focusing on the multi-sectoral and multi-dimensional challenges and opportunities of sustainable urbanisation.
He is an alumnus of IIT-Delhi and the Law and Management schools of the University of Delhi. He is a polymath, global practice and thought leader, educator and institution builder with close to 40 years of local to global interdisciplinary experience. Aromar has led over 220 major practice, consulting and research assignments in India and abroad; has deep governance, institutional development, management and implementation experience, across public, private, civil society and academic institutions; is a widely cited scholar across multiple fields (urban, infrastructure, climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development); lectured and taught at 100 of the world’s leading universities and think tanks across six continents; helped design and review development investments of over $ 15 billion; worked on 5 of the world’s 10 largest cities; and on multiple international projects across over a dozen countries.
Aromar is one of the world’s leading experts on global environmental change, especially climate change.
He is a Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) of the seminal 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15); a CLA of the synthesis chapter on Climate Resilient Development Pathways (CRD) of the IPCC Working Group Assessment Report 6 (AR6) and a member of the Core Writing Team (CWT) of the IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report (SYR). He was earlier a CLA of the 2014 IPCC Assessment Report 5 (AR5) on Urban Areas, that established the role of cities and regions in addressing climate risks. He is a co-lead of the four report Summary for Urban Policymakers series of the IPCC AR6 that was launched at COP27 in 2022.
Martin Rueff is President of the Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau de Genève and a member of the Foundation Board of the Maison Rousseau et Littérature. He is a poet and has been a professor in the Department of Modern French Languages and Literature at the University of Geneva since 2010. He previously taught at the universities of Bologna and Paris VII-Diderot. He is a regular contributor to the journals Po&sie, La Polygraphe and Passages à l’Act, and directs the collection “Terra d’Altri” at Verdier, specializing in Italian literature. At Gallimard, he was responsible for editing the works of Cesare Pavese in the collection “Quarto” and participated in the edition of the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss in the “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade”, as well as those of Michel Foucault in 2015. His fields of research include 18th century French literature and thought, the work and thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, literature and philosophy (especially moral philosophy), contemporary poetry and poetics, etc. He is a translator of Italo Calvino, Carlo Ginzburg and Giorgio Agamben.
Proposals will be accepted from January 28 to June 28, 2023.
Deadline for submission:
June 28, 2023, at midnight.
The winning projects will be announced in spring 2024.
This initiative aims to encourage the highest possible public engagement with contemporary and future societal issues. This initiative aims to encourage the highest possible public engagement with contemporary and future societal issues. It is open to young people and adults, artists, academics, interdisciplinary research groups, associations, NGOs, schools, and anyone else who is interested.
By submitting an application, you automatically agree that the images and text of the application may be freely shared on social media and reproduced in print and online.
A $20,000 prize for participants aged 25 and younger
A prize of $20,000 for participants aged over 25.
One of the competition’s main objectives will be to present the most interesting projects to a national and international audience, both to share the results of this collective engagement and to encourage future generations to commit to a free participatory and inclusive society.
Patrick Gosatti
contratsocial@m-r-l.ch
Martin Rueff is a poet and has been a professor in the Department of Modern French Languages and Literature at the University of Geneva since 2010. He previously taught at the universities of Bologna and Paris VII-Diderot. He is a regular contributor to the journals Po&sie, La Polygraphe and Passages à l’Act, and directs the collection “Terra d’Altri” at Verdier, specializing in Italian literature. At Gallimard, he was responsible for editing the works of Cesare Pavese in the collection “Quarto” and participated in the edition of the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss in the “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade”, as well as those of Michel Foucault in 2015. His fields of research include 18th century French literature and thought, the work and thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, literature and philosophy (especially moral philosophy), contemporary poetry and poetics, etc. He is a translator of Italo Calvino, Carlo Ginzburg and Giorgio Agamben.
Maria Lind is a Swedish curator, curatorial artist and writer. She is currently the cultural affairs advisor at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow. She has previously held the Chair of Art Research at the Oslo Academy of Arts, worked as director of Tensta konsthall (Stockholm) and the 11th Gwangju Biennale. Maria Lind has also been director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008-2010), as well as director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005-2007) and the Kunstverein München (2002-2004). Since the early 1990s she has taught in many countries, including at the Academy of Art in Munich and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Maria Lind is the author of some twenty books and curator of numerous exhibitions.
Scott Langdon is the Executive Director of Our Common Home, an international association based in Geneva. Our Common Home promotes the civic participation of all members of society in developing solutions to climate change, particularly those people with more traditional values who feel a deep attachment to place, tradition, family, and nation and who, until now, have been left out of the climate change conversation. This work is motivated by a desire to see climate change become a non-polemical topic and by a love of the environment, something that brings people together. Prior to launching Our Common Home, Scott directed the Purpose Climate Lab in New York City. He led strategic communications and public campaigns to highlight energy security, air pollution, and conservation issues in the United States, Brazil, India, and Kenya. Early in his career, Scott worked in British politics, where he served as director of the Labour Party’s general secretary’s office and as an advisor on the Labour Party’s policy review prior to the 2015 election.
Samia Henni was born and raised in Algiers. She is a historian, educator and exhibition maker on built, destroyed and imagined environments. Her research and teaching focus on issues of colonization, war, extraction, deserts, forced displacement and gender. She is currently an assistant professor in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University where she teaches the history of architecture and urban development. A graduate of ETH Zurich, she has previously taught at Princeton University, ETH, the University of Zurich, and the Geneva School of Art and Design. Her books include Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (EN, 2017; FR, 2019) .
Denise Ferreira da Silva is an academic and artist, and a professor at the University of British Columbia, interested in the ethical-political challenges of the “global present”. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), A Dívida Impagavel (Oficina da Imaginaçāo Política and Living Commons, 2019), Unpayable Debt (Stenberg/MIT Press, 2022). His numerous articles have been published in leading interdisciplinary journals such as Social Text, Theory, Culture & Society, Social Identities, PhiloSOPHIA, Griffith Law Review, Theory & Event, or The Black Scholar.
Her artistic work includes the films Serpent Rain (2016) and 4Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), in collaboration with Arjuna Neuman. She has exhibited and lectured at major art venues such as Centre Pompidou (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London), MASP (Sāo Paulo), Guggenheim (New York) and MoMa (New York). She is a member of several boards, including the Haus de Kulturen de Welt (Berlin), the International Consortium for Critical Theory Programs, and the journals Postmodern Culture, Social Identities and Dark Matter.
Originally from Brittany, Corto Fajal is an explorer of traditional societies and cultures, and more specifically of “root peoples”. Driven by a particular interest in the wilderness and its inhabitants, he has been making documentary films for the past twenty years. Claiming a certain quality of immersive time, he shared the life of Jon, a nomadic Sami reindeer herder above the Arctic Circle for six years before his film Jon, face aux vents was released in 2011. More recently, after spending a year on the island of Tikopia (Solomon Islands), he directed the film Nous Tikopia released in theaters in 2018. Corto Fajal is a member of the Supervisory Committee of the People’s Assembly of the Rhone, a collective of 30 Swiss and French citizens gathered to design a new participatory model of ecological action on the scale of a river ecosystem.
Beatriz Botero Arcila is an assistant professor of law at Sciences Po Paris and an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she is also a lawyer at the Universidad de los Andes, in Bogota, Colombia. Her research interests include data governance in urban environments, privacy law, data governance policies, etc. Her current research focuses on how surveillance technologies have been adopted for public safety in Europe and the United States and how they interact with other public interests (i.e. civil liberties), institutional frameworks and incentives. In addition, she has advised fintech companies, human rights and civil society organizations. She is a co-founder of the Edgelands Institute (Berkman Klein Center, Harvard) focused on the study of digital surveillance and cities.
Monika Bollinger studied history, Arabic philology and international public law in Zurich. From 2012 to 2018, she was the Middle East correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Jerusalem, Cairo and Beirut. She then travelled throughout the region (Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen) as an analyst for the “Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies” and later worked as a project manager in the field of peacebuilding. Since March 2021, she has been Middle East editor at the foreign service of Spiegel. In 2021 she published Tripolis – Der Nahe Osten im Spiegelbild einer Stadt (Rotpunkt).
James Arvanitakis is Director of the Forrest Research Foundation. He was previously Pro Vice Chancellor (Engagement and Advancement) at the University of Western Sydney, Senior Consultant at the Astrolabe Group and Executive Director of Fulbright Australia. After a successful career in finance and human rights, he has worked with universities for over 15 years, establishing innovative education and research programs, including The Academy at Western (awarded the Australian Financial Review Excellence in Education Award).
He is a regular contributor to debates on complex and controversial topics on ABC News 24 and The Drum and has published over 100 articles. James is a Fulbright alumnus, having spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming as a Milward L Simpson Fellow. In 2021, he was named the first Patron of Diversity Arts Australia in recognition of his commitment to a cultural sector that reflects Australia’s rich diversity. In 2022, he founded Respectful Disagreements, a courageous spaces project that promotes the lost art of civility in political disagreements as well as the educational power of discomfort.