The Possibilities of Peasants: Capitalism, international human rights law, and strategies of subversion

SGEL lecture by Margot Salomon (LSE)

Datum en tijd:
25 november 2019 15:30 - 17:00 uur

Locatie:
Universiteit van Amsterdam

Roeterseilandcampus – gebouw A, ruimte A3.01

Nieuwe Achtergracht 166

1018 WV Amsterdam

Dr Margot E Salomon is Associate Professor in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Director of the interdisciplinary Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy at LSE Human Rights.

In this Sustainable Global Economic Law lecture, Margot Salomon will present her recent paper 'Nihilists, Pragmatists and Peasants: A Dispatch on Contradiction in International Human Rights Law.'

Her recent essay engages theory to help human rights advocates see what they may not have seen before. It focuses on the new UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants drawing on the commodity form theory of law developed by the Soviet jurist Evgeny Pashukanis. Pashukanis provided a far reaching critique of law that cautioned against a ‘radicalism that unconsciously remains imprisoned’ within a capitalist frame of reference. Through this lens an analysis of the contradiction in what is at times a radical normative project in international human rights law is presented, with theoretical insight helping to reveal the paradoxes that have ostensible human rights successes perpetuate the suffering they seek to confront. But are we, then, to abandon law altogether? In building on the dilemmas that come from capitalism’s connection to international law exposed in the essay, this presentation will explore means through which deploying human rights law might, yet, subvert the status quo.

Additional information: https://www.uva.nl/en/shared-content/subsites/amsterdam-center-for-international-law/en/events/lectures/2019/11/acil-lecture-by-margot-salomon.html?origin=yiD0tqAUS6W8WVuh7rCWcg