I guess it is 2012 everywhere on earth now, so fellow earthlings, happy 2012!

REGULATING THE SOCIAL IMPACTS OF SPECULATIVE FINANCIAL PRACTICES

Meeting sponsored by the Essex Business and Human Rights Project and the Law Society of England and Wales

18 May 2011, 7-9 PM
The Law Society’s Hall – 113 Chancery Lane – London

The world’s attention on the link between Human Rights and Business has turned to the finance sector. Principles developed by John Ruggie, UN Special Representative on Transnational Corporations and Human Rights, can potentially apply to the impacts of financial activity. What influence might this have on speculative practices designed to manage risk, and how might the social impacts of that activity be assessed?

The aim of this meeting is to encourage discussion of the issues with the audience, for which ample time at the session will be provided

1830-1900 Arrival and registration

1900-2100 Roundtable discussion

Chairs: Tony Fisher, Chair of the Human Rights Committee of the Law Society and Professor Sheldon Leader, Director of the Essex and Human Rights Project

Speakers introducing themes for discussion:

- Dr. Mary Dowell-Jones, University of Nottingham: ‘The challenge of linking human rights and speculative practices designed to manage financial risk’
- Professor Neil Kellard, University of Essex: ‘The consequences of commodity trading in food’

2100 – 2200 Reception

Registration Details

There is no charge for attendance. To assist in planning we need an indication of your intention to attend this meeting by 5pm May 2nd, 2011 to ebhr@essex.ac.uk For those who indicate their intention to attend, a packet with background reading on the issues to be discussed will be provided

SUMMARY OF OPENING STATEMENTS:

Dr. Mary Dowell-Jones, University of Nottingham, will argue that once one ventures into the specialised aspects of international finance – which make up the bulk of financial activity – there is no straightforward way of applying classic human rights methodology that requires reasonably direct traceability of harm from actor to human rights victim. The profile of systemic risk across the financial markets at any given point is dynamic, conditional on the activities of millions of actors spread throughout the system, and very difficult to disentangle. We need to start developing a conceptual work which will map an understanding of human rights values into technical aspects of finance so that we can demonstrate how risk management or capital adequacy, for example, are relevant to human rights and how that relevance may change the way these practices are structured.

Professor Neil Kellard, University of Essex, will consider the principles structuring commodity trading in food, and their impacts. Recent episodes of high and volatile prices for commodities such as wheat, maize and rice have pushed many vulnerable groups into extreme hunger. These commodities have become an asset class included in the portfolio of many institutional investors and traded by hedge funds. This talk examines whether speculative behavior in derivative markets has contributed towards higher and more volatile prices for key commodities. Even when a causal link is difficult to trace, it could be argued the financial community should show that the use of these instruments does not violate the concept of primum non nocere.

Website: www.abdn.ac.uk/cisrul

The inter-disciplinary Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL) at the University of Aberdeen will offer two or more PhD studentships starting 2011-12. We welcome applicants from anthropology, cultural and literary studies, history, legal theory and socio-legal studies, philosophy, politics, religious studies, sociology and theology. The studentships will include full fees and may include partial maintenance.

Please note that applicants must have completed or be close to completing a postgraduate Masters degree.

Deadline for full consideration of applications for the 2010-11 studentships is 30 March.

The Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law aims to produce conversation across the social sciences and humanities on key concepts of the modern polity. Citizenship, civil society and rule of law are three such key concepts, all three of some pedigree but enjoying a new lease of life, prescribed by bodies such as IMF and United Nations, championed by social movements, and debated in the media and in academic research. We are also interested in related concepts such as democracy, human rights, multiculturalism and pluralism, as well as in the question of religion including how ‘religious’ is distinguished from ‘secular’.

Please visit www.abdn.ac.uk/cisrul for a description of the Centre’s mission, staff and activities, and for information about how to apply for the PhD studentships.

After the defense

On 11.01.10, I had a public defense of my dissertation at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. The questions were firm but fair, and I came away with a nice grade (yes, German Ph.D. dissertations are graded).

Thanks to everybody who in one way or another made writing the dissertation less of a pain than I am sure it would have been.

The book is acclaimed as the first comprehensive book on the ideas and legacy of Karl Polanyi. If you have ever heard of The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi wrote the book.

HT to Tyler Cowen.

The first in the series appears today, and it is an excerpt of a review he wrote of Stephen Smith’s Négrologie: pourquoi l’Afrique meurt. The following two paragraphs are typical of his take on the book:

There is no systematic attempt to give an account of the role of the great powers in Africa – the USA, allied with South Africa and Museveni, France and Nigeria increasingly drawn together in opposition to these, China and Japan as aid donors. Britain’s remarkable eclipse as an influence is passed over. Smith’s aim is to show that Africa’s present has no future. Perhaps this is true of France and some of its former colonies; and Nigeria’s potential seems to be indefinitely on hold; but the other players are on a roll, with South African capital entertaining expansionist scenarios not seen since the days of Cecil Rhodes and Asian manufacturers tapping into Africa’s burgeoning market.

……..

Even more damaging to this emphasis on a moribund Africa is the astonishing rise of cities in 20th-century Africa. A region which had hardly any urban population in 1900 is now half urbanized. The reality of African societies today is a very young population living in cities with a lot of time on their hands. There has been a cultural revolution in the modern arts as a result of this development, although you would not read about it in this book or in most of the mainstream western media. Rather Africa is portrayed as the unchecked playground of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. This is systematic and some writers have pointed out the continuity with earlier attempts to advocate genocide on grounds of imperialism. “Exterminate all the brutes”, were the last words of Kurz’s report in Heart of Darkness. (Another of Smith’s books is Africa without Africans!) It is hard to miss an apparently unconscious wish today that Africans would die out, instead of merely performing their role as congenital inferiors in world society. Smith’s relationship to this claim is ambiguous.

I am pretty sure that the series of posts will be excellent, and you should definitely join the discussion. Even if for you, an interest in Africa is nothing more than just a smart career move.

As Berlin Queer and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler’s decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride. We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status to honour queer of colour critiques against racism, war, borders, police violence and apartheid. We especially value her bravery in openly critiquing and scandalising the organisers’ closeness to homonationalist organisations. Her courageous speech is a testimony to her openness for new ideas, and her readiness to engage with our long activist and academic work, which all too often happens under conditions of isolation, precariousness, appropriation and instrumentalisation.

Sadly this is happening once again, for the people of colour organisations who according to Butler should have deserved the award more than her are not mentioned once in the press reports to date. Butler offered the prize to GLADT (www.gladt.de), LesMigraS (www.lesmigras.de), SUSPECT and ReachOut (www.reachoutberlin.de), yet the one political space mentioned in the reports is the Transgenial Christopher Street Day, a white-dominated alternative Pride event. Instead of racism, the press focuses on a simple critique of commercialisation. This even though Butler herself was quite clear: ‘I must distance myself from complicity with racism, including anti-Muslim racism.’ She notes that not just homosexuals, but also ‘bi, trans and queer people can be used by those who want to wage war.’

The CSD, via Renate Künast of the Green Party (who appeared to have difficulties pronouncing the award winner’s name and grasping basic aspects of her writings) introduced Butler as a determined critic. Five minutes later, the same critical determination caused the faces of presenters to drop. Rather than engage with the speech in any way, Jan Salloch und Ole Lehmann could think of nothing better than blanketly refuse any charge of racism and attack the ca. 50 queers of colour and allies who had come out in Butler’s support: ‘You can scream all you like. You are not the majority. That’s enough.’ The finale was an imperialist fantasy matched by the backdrop of the Brandenburger Tor: ‘Pride will just continue in its programme… No matter what… Worldwide and here in Berlin… This is how it’s always been and will always be.’

In the past years, racism has indeed been the red thread of international Pride events, from Toronto to Berlin, as well as of the wider gay landscape (see queer of colour theorists’ Jasbir Puar’s and Amit Rai’s early critique of this in their 2002 article ‘Monster Terrorist Fag’). In 2008, the Berlin Pride motto was ‘Hass du was dagegen?’, which might translate as ‘You go’ a problem or wha’?’. Homophobia and Transphobia are redefined as the problems of youth of colour who apparently don’t speak proper German, whose Germanness is always questioned, and who simply don’t belong. 2008 is also the year that the hate crimes discourse enters more significantly into German sexual politics. Its rapid assimilation was aided by the fact that the hatefully criminal homophobe was already known: migrants, who are already criminalised, and are incarcerated and even deported with ever growing ease.

This moral panic is made respectable by dubious media practices and so-called scientific studies: Where every case of violence that can be connected to a gay, bi or trans person (no matter if the apparent perpetrator is white or of Colour, and no matter if the basis is homophobia, transphobia or a traffic altercation) is circulated as the latest proof of what we all know already – that queers, especially white men it seems, are worst off of all, and that ‘the homophobic migrants’ are the main cause for this. This increasingly accepted truth is by no small measure the fruit of the work of homonationalist organizations like the Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany and the gay helpline Maneo, whose close collaboration with Pride ultimately caused Butler to reject the award. This work largely consists in media campaigns that repeatedly represent migrants as ‘archaic’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘homophobic’, violent, and unassimilable. Nevertheless, one of these organizations now ironically receives public funding in order to ‘protect’ people of colour from racism. The ‘Rainbow Protection Circle against Racism and Homophobia’ in the gaybourhood Schöneberg was spontaneously greeted by the district mayor with an increase in police patrols. As anti-racists, we sadly know what more police (LGBT or not) mean in an area where many people of colour also live – especially at times of ‘war on terror’ and ‘security, order and cleanliness.’

It is this tendency of white gay politics, to replace a politics of solidarity, coalitions and radical transformation with one of criminalization, militarization and border enforcement, which Butler scandalizes, also in response to the critiques and writings of queers of colour. Unlike most white queers, she has stuck out her own neck for this. For us, this was a very courageous decision indeed.

Yeliz Çelik, Sanchita Basu, Lucy Chebout, Lisa Thaler, Jin Haritaworn, Jen Petzen,Aykan Safoğlu and Cengiz Barskanmaz von SUSPECT
20 June, 2010.

SUSPECT is a new group of queer and trans migrants, Black people, people of colour and allies. Our aim is to monitor the effects of hate crimes debates and to build communities which are free from violence in all its interpersonal and institutional forms.

HT Blacklooks