140237 SE SE IE - Politics and History : a Transdisciplinary Approach (2011W)

Increasing juridification of political and social processes can be observed on varying levels: all sorts of social and political problems tend to be negotiated within a discourse on rights, ongoing juridifaction also takes center stage in many strategies of development cooperation. F.e., the problem of unequal treatment of men and women, the problem of disadvantage of disabled people as well as ethnic, religious and other minorities usually are tackled by defining enforcable rights or introducing anti-discrimination laws. An example would be the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, UN 1979) which the UN also designates as bill of rights for women. In a similar vein, to develop democracy is seen as strengthening liberal civil rights and is often equated with a certain kind of constitutionalization that canonizes a certain sample of civil rights in the constitution and makes them enforcable via a constitutional court.

Moreover, even the problem of poverty is discussed within a discourse on rights recently: since 2008 the United Nations Development Program has been pursuing the rights based concept Legal Empowerment of the Poor and the Eradication of Poverty (LEP) to fight poverty (UN 2009, UNDP 2008). In order to punish war crimes and genocide the international community strives to establish an International Criminal Court. Finally, institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) are perceived on a global level as the source of an international law of commerce promoting the process of international law making.

On a micro level, in everyday relations among people, the globalization of law is mirrored in the development of a particular kind of rights awareness. Only when a certain way of self-perception and of interpreting one's own position in the categories of law is developed, global initiatives such as CEDAW or LEP can be successful. This is increasingly noticed by research in the sociology and the anthropology of law.

The aim of the seminar is to examine the conditions and consequences of these processes and to critically view the concept of rights based development against this backdrop. Aiming at a transdisciplinary approach we proceed from studies in the historical, political and sociological sciences and examine the reach of these disciplinary approaches by looking at concrete examples.