The complexity of Human Rights: a discussion of Sally Engle Merry's work

 

THE COMPLEXITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS: A DISCUSSION OF SALLY ENGLE MERRY’S WORK

Human rights are avowedly universal but must be translated by local activists to make sense in specific contexts, a process Sally Engle Merry called vernacularization. Human rights progress is conventionally measured through global quantitative indicators which give the illusion of control and comparability, but radically oversimplify social and political processes. How can we avoid “the seductions of quantification” and understand how human rights are materialized, appropriated, and implemented in everyday social justice activism? In her decades-long research on human rights, Sally Engle Merry brought to light the complex social dynamics in which human rights are embedded and demonstrated how their presentation as single, universal, and immutable elides their flexibility and many strengths.

To celebrate a new book in her honour, The Complexity of Human Rights: From Vernacularization to Quantification, leading human rights scholars come together to discuss how the concepts Merry pioneered help us to understand current human rights challenges and crises.

Where: Online with Allegra Lab

Who: Philip Alston, Julie Billaud, Jane Cowan, Meg Davis, Mark Goodale, César Rodriguez-Garavito, Jack Snyder, Richard Wilson with Sridhar Venkatapuram as discussant.

When: 16 May, 4 PM (CEST), 3 PM (UK), 11 AM (EDT)

Registration link: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwoc-CqpjMqH9QTdKLQnjb25Ax6w3mFCUZJ

Call for Papers Spring 2014: A Symposium on Transnational Criminal Law

 

Transnational Legal Theory

Call for Papers Spring 2014: A Symposium on Transnational Criminal Law

Transnational Legal Theory (http://www.hartjournals.co.uk/tlt/) publishes high-quality theoretical scholarship that addresses transnational dimensions of law and legal dimensions of transnational fields, regulatory regimes and evolving normative-institutional arenas.

 

The journal is currently accepting submissions for a special symposium issue that addresses the potential and substance of Transnational Criminal Law (TCL), an evolving and still largely under-explored field of law. TCL is at the intersection of domestic, international and comparative criminal law and reaches deep into contemporary debates over conceptions of crime and illegality, social values and regulatory politics.

 

Submissions to the symposium may approach the topic from any number of angles, including (but not limited to):

• Theory and Definition
• What is transnational criminal law?
• What are the implications or added value of transnational criminal law to domestic criminal law?
• Actors and Participants
• Who benefits from regimes of transnational criminal law? Who is disadvantaged?
• Who has agency to define and shape transnational criminal law?
• How does culture inform the development or acceptance of transnational criminal law?
• Existing and Emerging Regulatory Regimes
• What issues arise related to legitimacy of such regimes?
• What problems would arise in the application of transnationalized criminal law with regards to, for example, effectiveness or enforcement?
• What trends are emerging in the politics of criminalization/decriminalization?
• Outlook and Prospects
• How do we address and resolve such issues?
• What will transnational criminal law regimes change over the next few years? Over the next decade?

 

We are inviting abstracts and/or full paper submissions for anonymous peer review. Abstracts outlining the direction of the planned submission are invited by Monday 17 February 2014 and final papers are due by Monday 28 April 2014. Abstracts and/or submissions as well as any inquiries should be directed to tlteditorial@hartpub.co.uk or PZumbansen@osgoode.yorku.ca.

 

The Principle of Personification. Visual Intelligence and Epistemic Tradition, 1300-1800"

 The Principle of Personification. Visual Intelligence and Epistemic Tradition, 1300-1800"

Dr. Cornelia Logemann

Hardly any imaging technique was more successful in the early modern period than personification. Allegorical interpretive contexts, which were largely made up of these embodiments, dominated the arts - and it was not uncommon for the extensive and increasingly complex image programs to begin to oscillate ambivalently for the viewer.

While there was already a new interest in this central cultural technique in the late Middle Ages, the principle of 'personification' received further impetus from the 'rediscovery' and connection with mythological elements from the late 14th and 15th centuries.

All over Europe people celebrated the return of the ancient gods, who, now removed from their context, embodied primarily abstract properties and principles for the contemporary observer.

Walter Benjamin already described the discrepancy between the 'disembodied projection' of the Middle Ages and the physical figures of gods that the Renaissance rediscovered for its purposes - and the success of this new form of representation seems to be explained not least by this tension.

The aim of the junior research group is to demonstrate from various disciplinary perspectives the forms and functions of this central cultural technique in the crucial early phase from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century, which must be considered fundamental for the reconstruction of the modern understanding of images.

Trading Diasporas in the Eastern Mediterranean (1250-1450)

 

Trading Diasporas in the Eastern Mediterranean (1250-1450)

 Dr. phil. des. Georg Christ

The research group ‘Trading Diasporas’ analyses how trading diasporas such as Venetian, Jewish, Greek or Persian communities, shaped the cultural boundaries in the late medieval Eastern Mediterranean.

Trading diasporas stood at the intersection of Mediterranean civilisations and were shaped by transcultural trade contacts as much as by “cultural” antagonisms. They acted as vanguards of their entities in foreign lands and thus mediated between “cultures” by constantly redrawing linguistic, legal, and economic borders.

The research group studies tensions within and between different diasporic groups and their “host” societies. We are interested in how these diasporas positioned themselves between their homeland and their host environment in the context of religious warfare and the concepts of jihad and crusade. To what extent was their internal organisation shaped by transcultural exchange and cultural antagonisms? Did they develop into parallel societies or did the merge with their host culture?  Ultimately, our research and public events are intended to contribute to a better understanding of historic and modern societies between transcultural integration and antagonistic conception of ‘cultures’.