The project is part of the package proposal ‘Regulation, Legitimization and Political Ecology of Property Regimes in the Pandemic’ (together with M.Schütt, C.Henning). The common starting point is the assumption that political measures taken to control the Corona crisis have challenged societal property relations. This project explores the political ecology of food supply, i.e. socio-ecological problems during the pandemic. A guiding thesis assumes that economic success in the prevalent food system is achieved at the expense of social and ecological issues, which intensifies the problematic societal consequences of the pandemic. The main focus of the project lies on the crisis-induced re-negotiations and possible re-arrangements of the socio-ecological issues of food supply regarding their property relations. It will be reconstructed how the different types and scales of property (small and big private businesses, regulations and public enterprises, cooperatives and use of commons) and their relations (private resources and/or public access and/or common participation) take effect as selective forces in these negotiations. It is expected that the integrated case findings will allow assessments of probable long-term consequences and suggestions for pandemic-preventive, sustainable food systems.
Kategorie: Papers at the Max-Weber-Kolleg
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath presents a working paper on ‚A Copernican Moment: Engaging Economics with Geoethics‘
Chapter draft October 1, 2020: Martin Bohle, ed. “Geo-societal narratives – contextualising geosciences” (Palgrave)
This chapter proposes a geocentric turn in economics that aims at radically transforming the performative functions of economics in contemporary capitalism: Inspired by an expression of John Stuart Mill, I outline the idea of the Earth as a ‘community of advantage’. The argument proceeds in two steps. The first is to switch from an anthropocentric to a geocentric conceptualization of the purpose of economic activity: The economy does not primarily serve human consumption but is a central element in Earth system regulation. This reflects the rise of the technosphere as a new regulatory layer in Earth system processes. The second is to combine the economic concept of externality with the creation of non-human rights which are represented in legal persons that are owned by non-human entities. This metamorphosis of rights is grounded in the fundamental norms of Rights of Earth. Non-humans are owners of legal persons which are managed by humans as stewards. As a result, the economy and the legal system morph to including both human and non-human interests in their operations. This implies that the performative functions of economics, after the geocentric turn, would also incorporate the geosciences and the life sciences. In the Earth as a community of advantage, geoethics would achieve a human scale, in the sense of realistic moral demands and commitments.
João Tziminadis presents a working paper on ‚Responding to Finitude: The Problem of Death between Ontological Insecurity and Technical Security‘
In this text, I would like to argue that one is able to identify two parallel trends in the sociological and cultural-critical accounts of modern society’s relation to death. On the one hand, modern subjects seem to be deprived from overarching and socially bonding interpretations of their mortality. However, on the other hand, differently from many who defend that modern society displaces death from public discourse and make it a hidden subject to which no more cultural answer is produced, it seems that later-modern society actively invests in a particular relationship with death: a technical one.. The unprecedented rise on life expectations worldwide is an indication of that. For most of the time these gain in technical control over death has been an indirect consequence of general improvement in life conditions. Nonetheless, it is observable that, in recent times, more direct and intentional attempts to transform mortality into a technical problem come to the fore. The general argument of this contribution is that it is possible to conceive of the technical taming of mortality as an active cultural response to the problem of death in modernity and, more explicitly, in late modernity. As religion, philosophy or the arts, technology constitutes a form of responding to the awareness of our inescapable finitude. But, differently from them, a technological response does not promise any transcending projection beyond death.
Christoph Henning presents a woking paper on ‚State Interference with property: How Covid-19 changes the Legitimation of Property‘
In this report, I introduce my new project (which is under review by the DFG). For this I first develop how the research question (see the title) was motivated and outline some of the key assumptions. Secondly, I formulate some hypotheses that I hope to be able to substantiate in the future.
Qudsiya Contractor gives a working paper on ‚Title of the paper Islamic piety and self-transformation in a Mumbai slum‘
In this paper I look at how participation in a transnational Islamic missionary movement as well as pious volunteerism during the month of Ramzan form a significant aspect of the public expressions of Islam and community consciousness in a poor Muslim neighbourhood. Public expressions of Islam through acts of charity, construction and maintenance of places of worship and the ‘public’ observation of days of religious significance (since these remain largely confined to the boundaries of Muslim localities in the city) not just mark the Muslim neighbourhood as a religio-cultural space distinct from the rest of the city but also seek to forge a civic solidarity rooted in ethics and fraternity that often transcend neighbourhood boundaries. For the Muslim poor, acts of piety that juxtapose discourses of morality, ethics and community within the public realm of the Muslim life space I suggest are also about exploring the possibilities and challenges of modernity and egalitarianism.
Qudsiya Contractor gives a working paper on ‚Melancholia of the past‘
In this paper I analyse how the demolition of the Babri mosque by Hindu nationalists and the communal violence in its aftermath (1992-93) is remembered in a predominantly Muslim slum neighbourhood in Mumbai. By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I consider how a traumatic event is given meaning through fragmented memories inscribed in urban space. My aim here is to provide a nuanced analysis of the fragmented memories of post-Babri violence in Mumbai (then Bombay) through the recollections of the city’s Muslim poor, who faced the main brunt of the violence within the spatial context of the Muslim neighbourhoods that provide for a safe social backdrop for the expression of an otherwise suppressed memory that was pushed by the official narratives of the past into marginality. I suggest that the silencing of their voices by official versions of the past can lead to the creation of an alternative sociality that addresses community concerns to break the hold of the past and imagine the future of cohabitation.
Reshma Radhakrishnan presents a working paper on ‚‘Strategic Accommodation’ of Diversities: gender norms and identities beyond the norms and identities beyond the binaries‘
This paper engages with the ways and processes through which gender diversities are accommodated. Taking the case of trans women of Kerala, a small South-Indian state known for its high development indices despite low economic growth, the paper discusses the processes which involve different approaches to activism and their varying receptions . The transgender communities in Kerala today, when compared to the rest of the country, at the outset although certainly arguably enjoy a surprisingly respectable status. With exceptions, they are no longer forced to run away to a strange city that does not even speak their language. An emerging trend in this context is the ‘trans marriages’, or the heterosexual conjugality practiced by trans women and trans men. Using excerpts from interviews and interactions with ten trans women who are popular and at the forefront of the present day movement, and other secondary materials to support, the attempt is to understand and analyse the drastic changes and developments that happened within a very short time-span. The relevance of the questions I ask is in the changed social and political context where the law, the state and the civil society are accommodative of and more open and sensitive than before to sexual and gender diversities.
Having done this, the paper goes on to introduce the case of trans men, and proposes to make sense of the articulations of masculinities by the trans men of Kerala as an assignment for the future.
Nancy Alhachem is going to present a working paper on ‚Nazism in the Levant: Resonance Momentum?‘
For my second colloquium I planned on gathering empirical findings and investigating memorials as assumed ‘resonant-spaces’ but since life had other plans, and social gatherings, workshops and field work had to be freezed/postponed… will present this paper, which is part of a bigger chapter on the historical background from which the interviewees come. I had to restrict it to particular cases, for I’m not yet sure which ‘national-backgrounds’ will be included.
I argue in short, that the reception of the Holocaust in the Levant went through four stages, each very complicated and intertwined to be simply dismissed as echoes, or argued as ‘resonant’
Pre-conflict (Israel/Palestine): Sympathy
Post-war (nation-building): Denial
Nationalism and legitimization of totalitarian regimes: copying Nazism?
Post-2011 (Revolution/War/Exile): Empathy?
The first three simplified stages are reviewed here, in order to show that if there was a resonant encounter, it was far from being based on racial ideology. However, its effects had been used by totalitarian regimes, to gain legitimacy and ‘manipulate’ the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for their own aims. The outcome can be traced in how refugees and migrants approach the German Erinnerungkultur and their understanding of the Holocaust.
Tullio Viola presents a working paper on ‚Reflexive Thinking and Cultural Transmission‘
According to a rather widespread view of the relationship between individuals and their socio-cultural context, people articulate their thoughts and normative commitments through expressive tools or conceptual repertoires that are available in their social group. The research project here presented deals with a more specific and hitherto underrated case. I will investigate those cases in which the individual articulation of a thought is not carried out in an explicit manner, but hides behind the transmission of expressive tools that are charged with symbolic value. Those expressive tools may in turn become the object of long traditions that travel in space and time. Some examples: a legend, folktale, or rumor may provide members of a social group with a way to express their inarticulate needs and concerns; a picture, verbal formula or gesture may be resorted to in very different historical and geographical settings in virtue of a seemingly context-transcending expressive power; the memory of a historical event, or of a historical figure, may crystallize into a value-laden paradigm and thus become the object of a stable transmission chain. As I will argue, these apparently heterogenous examples are held together not only by their symbolic nature, but also by a significant overlapping between the act of articulation (i.e., the act by which individuals make explicit to themselves and others their thoughts and normative commitments) and the act of cultural transmission (i.e., the act by which individuals receive and pass on a cultural representation). In exploring the implications of this idea, my study will draw on the theoretical resources that have come out of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century dialogue between philosophy, social sciences, and Kulturwissenschaften. But it will also critically discuss some empirical findings in the field of history and sociology. Aim of this double methodology is to explore new insights about the philosophical puzzles of articulation while suggesting new paths of empirical investigation.
Sisi Sung is going to present a working paper on ‚Theorizing women in management in Chinese organizational context‘
This paper provides a review of previous studies regarding gender and organization, women in management in both Western and Chinese contexts. The paper aims to develop an analytical framework for understanding the empirical data collected from interviews with managers in Chinese private and state-owned enterprises.