CFP: The Power of Rights and/​or the Rights of Power in Global Politics, 5 – 8 June 2013, Tartu, Estonia

Call for Pro­pos­als: 1^st European Work­shops for Inter­na­tional Stud­ies (EWIS)
5 – 8 June 2013, Tartu, Estonia

http://​www​.sgir​.eu/​u​p​c​o​m​i​n​g​.​php

Work­shop 12:

The Power of Rights and/​or the Rights of Power in Global Politics

Con­ven­ors: Louiza Odysseos and Anna Selmeczi

While detract­ors of human rights have long argued that they form the moral and intel­lec­tual key­stone of a lib­eral hege­mony, their pro­ponents have countered that ‘human rights are meant to be good news for the under­priv­ileged, the down­trod­den, and the dis­pos­sessed’ (Dall­mayr), his­tor­ic­ally demarc­at­ing the grow­ing power of the king and, later, the state and today enabling the polit­ics of res­ist­ance in sym­bolic, dis­curs­ive and legal terms. This pro­posed work­shop seeks to com­bine the­or­et­ical dis­cus­sions and empir­ical exam­in­a­tions to explore how human rights are essen­tial to both the susten­ance of hege­mony and to the polit­ics of res­ist­ance in global polit­ics. The work­shop will exam­ine how human rights instru­ments and dis­courses aim to cur­tail power while often legit­im­at­ing and rein­for­cing its oper­a­tions in dis­tinct polit­ical and eth­ical ways. It will facil­it­ate dis­cus­sions explor­ing how rights ‘enable dis­cip­lin­ary pro­jects’ (Golder) by chan­nel­ing prac­tices of res­ist­ance into legal frame­works that delimit cam­paigns for justice. Cent­ral to its object­ives is to assess how human rights also provide oppor­tun­it­ies for chal­len­ging such pro­jects of power, oppor­tun­it­ies that are groun­ded on a rethink­ing of human­ity as the ‘com­munity of the gov­erned’ under­stood within the his­tory of colonialism.

A num­ber of schol­ars have expressed interest in inter­rog­at­ing this import­ant dual­ism of human rights. The work­shop there­fore would gen­er­ate dis­cus­sions about the emer­gence of human rights’ sub­jectiv­it­ies and dis­courses within struggles towards eman­cip­a­tion that have had vary­ing suc­cess in chal­len­ging preex­ist­ing power rela­tions, for example, in the recent waves of protest in the Middle East. Other poten­tial con­tri­bu­tions would ana­lyse how neo­lib­eral tech­no­lo­gies of gov­ern­ing use the dis­courses of human worth to dis­cip­line human rights in cases of immig­ra­tion; how the ten­sion between human and pos­it­ive rights incites res­ist­ance prac­tices by polit­ical sub­jects in the case of undoc­u­mented migrants; how, in var­ied geo­graph­ical loc­a­tions such as India, South Africa, Italy and Mex­ico, neo­lib­eral gov­ern­mental ration­al­it­ies deny the sub­jectiv­ity of the rights-​bearing cit­izen to the poor; how dir­ect action by act­iv­ists seeks to recon­struct par­tic­u­lar rights as strategies of res­ist­ance, such as the right to hous­ing in the midst of the global fin­an­cial crisis.

Please sub­mit your 200 words abstract online through the EWIS web­site:
https://​docs​.google​.com/​s​p​r​e​a​d​s​h​e​e​t​/​v​i​e​w​f​o​r​m​?​f​o​r​m​k​e​y​=​d​C​0​5​d​3​B​n​a​V​p​4​V​3​R​3​b​2​N​C​V​X​V​3​b​m​x​o​M​2​c​6MQ

Dead­line: 15 Decem­ber 2012. Applic­ants will be noti­fied by 15 Janu­ary 2013 about the out­come of the selec­tion process.

Look­ing for­ward to receiv­ing your submissions,

Louiza and Anna.

Dr Anna Sel­meczi
Insti­tute of Polit­ical and Inter­na­tional Stud­ies
Eötvös Loránd Uni­ver­sity of Bud­apest
Pázmány Péter sétány 1/​a.
H-​1117 Bud­apest
Hun­gary
Email: annaselmeczi@​caesar.​elte.​hu
Phone: +36 30 201 4552

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