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9th Songshan Forum for Dialogue between Chinese and Other World Civilizations ‘What Is Home? Ethical Thinking in a Global Pandemic’ September 19-20, 2020 Invitation Letter June 5, 2020 Dear Prof. Alexander CHUMAKOV , On behalf of Peking University’s Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, the China International Cultural Exchange Center, the Society for the Preservation of Chinese Cultural Relics, and the Foundation for the Transmission of Chinese History and Civilisation in Henan Province, we cordially invite you to take part in the 9th Songshan Forum for Dialogue between Chinese and Other World Civilizations on September 19-20, 2020. This year’s forum - organized around the theme ‘What is Home? Ethical Thinking in the Global Pandemic’ - explores the meaning of ‘family’ in the context of ongoing travel restrictions. COVID-19 has isolated communities from each other, leaving us in our own domestic ‘bubbles’ for long periods. For many in both town and country, the family home has become a place of refuge; in the face of the pandemic, the very meaning of the concept of ‘home’ has been reexamined. At the same time, the question of the fiduciary relationship between individual families and the broader human community has also been posed in a new light, both in China and around the world. Three sub-fora - ‘Distance and Dialogue’, ‘Crisis and Opportunity’, and ‘How to Rebuild a Fiduciary Community’ - will explore these issues. In view of your significant academic expertise, we invite you to take part in this year’s forum from the comfort of your own bubble by either sending us an advance video (15-20 minutes) of your presentation, or followed by livestream via cloud meeting app. The video will then be subtitled by our Organizing Committee before being inserted into the final program on September 19-20. Please signal your interest in participating at the earliest possible juncture, hopefully before Wednesday June 15, 2020. The final deadline for the submission of video presentations is Monday August 10, 2020. We look forward to hearing from you soon! Kind regards Songshan Forum Organizing Committee Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies Peking University Preliminary Program Overview Processes of industrialization and modernization have profoundly affected family structures in communities all over the post-Enlightenment world; the primary site of China’s own ‘Cultural Revolution’, indeed, was the family. Ethical reflection on the meaning of ‘home’ nevertheless precedes the Enlightenment by several thousand years in both East and West. COVID-19 has isolated communities from each other, leaving us in our own domestic ‘bubbles’ for long periods. For many in both town and country, the family home has become a place of refuge; in the face of the pandemic, the very meaning of the concept of ‘family’ has been reexamined. Sub-Fora Distance and Dialogue COVID-19 has accelerated global trends towards working and learning from home. Lockdowns, however, have not necessarily meant spiritual isolation; the ancient Confucian ideal of staying at home and passing on the spirit of humanism within one’s own family has suddenly, at least on one level, become more attainable than ever before. Crisis and Opportunity The Chinese version of ‘home is where the heart is’ is ‘home is where the heart finds peace’. On this optimistic account of human nature, global institutional and spiritual reform may succeed through a certain imaginative effort of ‘familying’ the wider world rather than through any parochial or tribal form of identity politics. Rebuilding a Fiduciary Community Fundamental questions of trust - among individuals, between families and their governments, and finally at the level of nations - have been raised by COVID-19. How might the outline of a renewed and strengthened fiduciary community be sketched at each of these levels?