Closing event

Time: 15.00-16.00, Thursday 16th November 2023

Location: Building 1467 - Room 616

- Celebrate the end of our journey with us

⬤The event will be followed by a reception at the lounge. All are welcome!

28/09/23

26/10/22

Imperialism, Inequality and Human Rights 

Webinar

There is a wealth of evidence which attests to the growth and deepening of economic inequality around the world, both within and between countries. There is a corresponding literature addressing the negative impact of economic inequality on the entire corpus of human rights. However, in both cases the dominant perspectives elide the root causes of economic inequality. They fail to take account of how contemporary imperialism entrenches and reproduces a system of global inequality. This paper will draw on recent scholarship on contemporary imperialism to demonstrate the central, structural role it plays in producing inequality, with all the human rights undermining implications this has. Further, it will be argued that any account of inequality and human rights that does not foreground imperialism, ends up superficially addressing symptoms, while leaving the core problem untouched.   

⬤ October 26th 2022, 14:00-15:30 (CEST)

28/09/22

Webinar

This talk provides a close reading of a series of reports mandated by the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities (the Sub-Commission) addressing economic inequality, income distributions and human rights published during the 1990s. These reports allow us to trace key shifts in the way human rights discourse framed concerns about economic distribution in an increasingly unequal world, as well as how the content of rights and the nature of state obligations were reconfigured. They reveal a gradual narrowing of human rights concerns over the decade, facilitated by the foregrounding of process over substance and opportunity over outcome, in order to expel broader structural considerations from its frame of visibility. Read against a background of economic globalization, this talk will show how human rights frameworks were internally transformed over the 1990s, to consolidate form of rights discourse that was both constrained from, and incapable of, contesting the neoliberal policy environment it reflected and the growing inequalities its produced.

⬤ September 28th 2022, 12:00-13:30 (CEST)

16/06/22

Terms of Exchange in the Social Sciences: Brazil and France, 1934-1964

Seminar (book-talk)

Would the most recognizable ideas in the French social sciences have developed without the influence of Brazilian intellectuals? While any study of Brazilian social sciences acknowledges the influence of French scholars, Ian Merkel argues the reverse is also true: the “French” social sciences were profoundly marked by Brazilian thought, particularly through the University of São Paulo. Through a collective intellectual biography of Brazilian and Frenchsocial sciences, Terms of Exchange reveals connections that shed new light on the Annales school, structuralism, and racial democracy, even as it prompts us to revisit established thinking on the process of knowledge formation through fieldwork and intellectual exchange. At a time when canons are being rewritten, this book reframes the history of modern social scientific thought.

⬤ June 16th 2022, 16:15-17:30 (CEST)

25/05/22

Webinar

⬤ May 25th 2022, 14:00-15:30 (CEST)

Webinar

Some human rights critics claim that human rights movements go hand in hand with the rise of neoliberalism and thus are either complicit with or helpless in preventing the rise of inequality in the world. Drawing on her book, Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century, Professor Kathryn Sikkink will argue that the relationship between inequality, neoliberalism, and human rights is more complex than the critics make it out to be. Sikkink demonstrates that the norms, laws, and institutions for the international protection of human rights originated in the 1940s and owe their existence to geographically diverse movements. The human rights movement has been effective at addressing multiple forms of inequality, giving us reason to believe these movements can address economic inequality as well.

30/03/22

Webinar

In this presentation, Professor David Lay Williams will present his work on John Stuart Mill’s thinking on economic inequality, which is part of his larger project on the intellectual history of economic inequality. Although sometimes understood as a champion of free markets, John Stuart Mill is among the most significant opponents of economic inequality of the 19th century. By focusing mostly on his relatively ignored, but extensive, writings on political economy, it is clear that inequality represents a unique and existential threat to his conception of justice, civic harmony, and ultimately utility, which turns out to require a significant degree of economic equality.

⬤ March 30th 2022, 14:00-15:30 (CEST)

08/12/21

Webinar

In this presentation, Gabriel Entin will focus on the problem of Political Hebraism as a form of theologico-political language on the republic in the Spanish Monarchy, from the readings of the converted Castilian humanists in the fifteenth century to those of the Spanish-American revolutionaries in the early nineteenth century.

03/11/21

In this seminar, Paul Kramer will explore how historians are drawn to questions of transnational and global historiography to overcome formidable, ongoing tensions between anti-colonial, diasporic and socialist approaches to unequal global power and its histories. A main question he will address is how transnational and global history might deliberately recast themselves self-consciously as critical intellectual projects, defined by their denaturalizing, problematizing, and historicizing of consequential transnational and global power relationships.

⬤ November 3rd 2021, 14:30-16:00

29/09/21

Seminar

In this seminar, Pablo Pryluka reconstructs the expansion of TV consumption and the advertising industry in Argentina during the 1960s. In comparison to the rest of South America, and to some European countries, he shows that—far from an underdeveloped economy—the country is best understood as an integrated national market.

⬤ September 29th 2021, 14:00-15:30

10/06/21 - 11/06/21

Symposium

This two-day symposium is designed to investigate the global intellectual history of inequality. It will do so through a double global lens: How have intellectuals from around the world thought about inequality in the world?

For more information on the online symposium and a link to sign up please follow: http://global-inequality.com/towards-a-global-intellectual-history-of-an-unequal-world/

Global Inequality and a Human Rights-Based Strategy to Development

Webinar/Bookinar with Christian Friis Bach and discussants Steven L.B. Jensen, The Danish Institute for Human Rights, and Annette Skovsted Hansen, Aarhus University (event in Danish)

In this webinar, Christian Friis Bach will present his new book Then I would like a dishwasher, please: A human rights-based strategy to development. Christians presentation of the book will be followed by comments by Steven L.B. Jensen, The Danish Institute for Human Rights and Annette Skovsted Hansen, Aarhus University.

⬤ April 29th 2021, 14.30-16.00

25/03/21

⬤ February 25th 2021, 17.30 – 19.00 (CET)

Webinar

⬤ November 19th 2020, 14.30 – 16.00

Webinar

Join us at this research seminar where historian Mads Yding will talk about colonialism, development, and poverty reduction in the Turkana district in northern Kenya during the 20. century

Seminar

Human Rights and Economic Inequality: The Scandinavian Approach

28/11/19

A global history of poverty

Seminar

Global history has often focused upon the tangible traces of global connections, the flows of capital and commodities, and the transcultural dialogues inscribed in material culture. Poverty, often defined as an absence of money, resources, and luxury goods, has long been in global history’s blind spot.

⬤ November 28th 2019

Seminar

In this seminar Nicolaisen talks about his ethnographic research on the Ghanaian commodity chain of cocoa and how intentional preservation of indeterminacy constitutes an important factor for those who wish to pursue personal accumulation of wealth, whilst also meeting expectations for reciprocity from their social peers.

⬤ October 24th 2019, 14.30 – 16.00

Whose world, which inequality?

Public Lecture

In this lecture, rather than ask how political thought can illuminate inequality, I shall therefore take the opposite approach, and explore some of the ways in which inequality illuminates the history of political thought. To do this I will examine how global inequality has been understood in different times and different places, and end with the question: whose inequality gets to count?

Upcoming Events

26/10/22

Imperialism, Inequality and Human Rights

There is a wealth of evidence which attests to the growth and deepening of economic inequality around the world, both within and between countries. There is a corresponding literature addressing the negative impact of economic inequality on the entire corpus of human rights. However, in both cases the dominant perspectives elide the root causes of economic inequality. They fail to take account of how contemporary imperialism entrenches and reproduces a system of global inequality. This paper will draw on recent scholarship on contemporary imperialism to demonstrate the central, structural role it plays in producing inequality, with all the human rights undermining implications this has. Further, it will be argued that any account of inequality and human rights that does not foreground imperialism, ends up superficially addressing symptoms, while leaving the core problem untouched. 

28/09/22

This talk provides a close reading of a series of reports mandated by the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities (the Sub-Commission) addressing economic inequality, income distributions and human rights published during the 1990s. These reports allow us to trace key shifts in the way human rights discourse framed concerns about economic distribution in an increasingly unequal world, as well as how the content of rights and the nature of state obligations were reconfigured. They reveal a gradual narrowing of human rights concerns over the decade, facilitated by the foregrounding of process over substance and opportunity over outcome, in order to expel broader structural considerations from its frame of visibility. Read against a background of economic globalization, this talk will show how human rights frameworks were internally transformed over the 1990s, to consolidate form of rights discourse that was both constrained from, and incapable of, contesting the neoliberal policy environment it reflected and the growing inequalities its produced.

16/06/22

Terms of Exchange in the Social Sciences: Brazil and France, 1934-1964

25/05/22

Inequalities and Quantification: Entangled Histories from Ghana, 1953-1966

⬤ May 25th 2022, 14:00-15:30 (CEST)

The Role of Human Rights in Addressing Global Inequality

Some human rights critics claim that human rights movements go hand in hand with the rise of neoliberalism and thus are either complicit with or helpless in preventing the rise of inequality in the world. Drawing on her book, Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century, Professor Kathryn Sikkink will argue that the relationship between inequality, neoliberalism, and human rights is more complex than the critics make it out to be. Sikkink demonstrates that the norms, laws, and institutions for the international protection of human rights originated in the 1940s and owe their existence to geographically diverse movements. The human rights movement has been effective at addressing multiple forms of inequality, giving us reason to believe these movements can address economic inequality as well.

⬤ April 27th 2022, 14:00-15:30 (CEST)

Webinar

⬤ March 30th 2022, 14:00-15:30 (CEST)

Political Hebraism in the Hispanic World

Webinar

⬤ December 8th 2021, 14:30-16:00

03/11/21

In this seminar, Paul Kramer will explore how historians are drawn to questions of transnational and global historiography to overcome formidable, ongoing tensions between anti-colonial, diasporic and socialist approaches to unequal global power and its histories. A main question he will address is how transnational and global history might deliberately recast themselves self-consciously as critical intellectual projects, defined by their denaturalizing, problematizing, and historicizing of consequential transnational and global power relationships.

⬤ November 3rd 2021, 14:30-16:00

29/09/21

Advertising, Development, and Inequality: Mass Consumption in 1960s Argentina

Seminar

In this seminar, Pablo Pryluka reconstructs the expansion of TV consumption and the advertising industry in Argentina during the 1960s. In comparison to the rest of South America, and to some European countries, he shows that—far from an underdeveloped economy—the country is best understood as an integrated national market.

⬤ September 29th 2021, 14:00-15:30

10/06/21 - 11/06/21

Towards a Global Intellectual History of an Unequal World, 1945-Today

Symposium

29/04/21

Global Inequality and a Human Rights-Based Strategy to Development

Webinar/Bookinar

In this webinar, Christian Friis Bach will present his new book Then I would like a dishwasher, please: A human rights-based strategy to development. Christians presentation of the book will be followed by comments by Steven L.B. Jensen, The Danish Institute for Human Rights and Annette Skovsted Hansen, Aarhus University.

⬤ April 29th 2021, 14:30-16:00

25/03/21

Global Intellectual History: Reflections on Methodology and Raison d’être

Webinar

In this webinar, global historian of ideas Dag Herbjørnsrud will reflect upon some recent discussions of the methodology and raison d’être of doing global intellectual history. (Why) should we do global intellectual history? How global should it be? How can we do so?

⬤ March 25th 2021, 13:30-15:00

25/02/21

⬤ February 25th 2021, 17:30-19:00 CET

How Indian Economics Redefined Universal Development from and at the Margins, 1870-1905

Webinar

Join us at this research webinar where Maria Bach (Assistant Professor of Economics, The American University of Paris) will talk about how Indian Economics redefined the concept of universality in the existing 19th century idea of development by rejecting the widely accepted comparative advantage model and assertion that progress originated in Europe.

⬤ November 19th 2020, 14:30-16:00 CET

08/10/20

26/05/20

A history of poverty reduction in northern Kenya

⬤ February 26th 2020, 12.15 - 15.00

Human Rights and Economic Inequality: The Scandinavian Approach

Seminar

In this seminar, Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard provides the first examination of socio-economic human rights in the multilateral diplomacy of the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark) at the United Nations from 1970 to 2000.

28/11/19

A global history of poverty

Seminar

17/09/19

"In this lecture, rather than ask how political thought can illuminate inequality, I shall therefore take the opposite approach, and explore some of the ways in which inequality illuminates the history of political thought. To do this I will examine how global inequality has been understood in different times and different places, and end with the question: whose inequality gets to count?"