The talk will explore and explain the emergence of alternative sets of winners and losers within the working class in three cases of sweeping industrial and market liberalization.

Sebastian Etchementdi is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science and International Studies, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from the Department. of Political Science at University of California at Berkeley working with Ruth and David Collier.

The Pinochet Case

Patricio Guzman's The Pinochet Case investigates the legal origins of the case against Augusto Pinochet, the general who overthrew President Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973. This documentary follows the legal cases that ultimately led to Pinochet being arrested and tried for his crimes against humanity committed over the 25 years that he ruled Chile.

Carlos Castresana received his law degree in 1979 from Complutense University, Madrid, Spain. He served as a District and Examine Judge, and Court Magistrate for a number of years, before becoming a member of the Public Prosecutors of Spain, where he worked in the Anti-drug and Anti-corruption Special Offices. In 2005, he was appointed Prosecutor of the Supreme Court. He was also a professor of criminal law at the University Carlos III, Madrid.

Mr. Castresana authored the formal complaint and subsequent reports in the Pinochet Case before the Audiencia Nacional in Spain. He has served as an expert in international legal cooperation and other issues in Europe and Latin America, under appointment of the United Nations, European Union, and Council of Europe. He received the Human Rights National Award in Spain in 1997, was awarded the Doctorate Honoris causa from the Guadalajara University, Mexico in 2003, and the Certificate of Honor from the City and County of San Francisco in 2004. Mr. Castresana teaches courses on human rights in Latin America and international criminal law and is coordinator of Project H32, in the United Nation's Office of Narcotics and Crime in Monterrey, Mexico.

Sponsored by the Stanford Law School, the Program on Global Justice, the Forum on Contemporary Europe, the Stanford Film Lab, VPUE, and the Introduction to the Humanities Program.

"Ethnicity in Today's Europe" will commence with a Related Presidential Lecture featuring Partha Chatterjee.

Conference Statement

Headlines today blaze with stories about the fate of Europe. There is a sense, both in Europe and around the world, that a sort of "tipping point" has been reached. A recurrent theme is the question of demographics. For instance, how are European social welfare systems going to cope with an aging population? What role will immigrants from outside Europe's borders, both recent and less recent, play in European society? What will be the impact of immigration between the member states of the European Union? What place will Europe's growing population of Muslims have in twenty-first century Europe?

As the ongoing process of unification redraws Europe's borders, as the populations of major European cities become more and more diverse, the question of ethnicity is at the forefront of many of the most important debates on the continent. On the one hand the long history of European national and ethnic identities is at play, as is the legacy of colonialism. On the other, a significant recent upswing in the movement of peoples around the globe has changed the face of Europe, often literally. Movement, of course, from outside Europe's borders into European states. But also, and crucially, movement within the space between Portugal and the Urals. Such movement certainly responds to a number of economic and social needs. At the same time, European conceptions of citizenship, equity, and nationhood often exist in tension with the realities of changing ethnic populations.

The conference "Ethnicity in Today's Europe" at Stanford will address this topic in an interdisciplinary manner. Participants will focus on the question: "What's new about the situation in Europe today?" Bringing together scholars from different disciplines, the conference will provide a historical perspective together with contributions addressing economic, social, cultural, and political issues. Some themes that may be discussed include: how the current situation mirrors or departs from the past; the role of the media in portraying the interaction between different groups; the different perspectives of specific populations within Europe; whether Europe's diversity is best described under the rubric of ethnicity, nationality, race, or some other term; similarities and differences between European nation-states with regard to diversity within their borders. Above all, participants will use their own disciplinary perspective to assess what is at stake in the interaction between peoples in Europe as the twenty-first century gets underway.

"Ethnicity in Today's Europe" is jointly presented by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Stanford Humanities Center.