social rights

Compromise with Character: An Integrated Framework to Assess the Moral Quality of Political Compromises

Patrick Overeem political science, post-individualism, social relations, social rights 21 May 2020

Dr Patrick Overeem

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2016-17

The aim of this project is to develop an integrated ethical framework for the assessment of the moral quality of political compromises. Such a framework is needed, because in times of polarization and populism, political compromises are particularly vital, but also increasingly unpopular and difficult to achieve. While academic ethicists have often abstract debates about the nature and impact of (hypothetical) compromises, media and citizens criticize the very game of striking political compromises, making politicians even more are embarrassed to admit them. Thus, we seem to have difficulties understanding what achieving a good compromise could be like.

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Is There an African Path to Disability Justice?

Oche Onazi disability, law, social rights 22 June 2015

Dr Oche Onazi

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2014-15

African legal theory, or legal philosophy, is defined as an enquiry into the ways in which law, legal concepts and institutions mirror the most salient and attractive communitarian values in sub-Saharan Africa. This project aims to show the role that can be played by African legal theory in forging and grounding a new response to exclusions suffered by people with disability in Africa as a matter of justice. 

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Social Justice, Predistribution and the Democratization of Capital: Political Theory and the Future of Social Democracy

Martin O'Neill democracy, economic theory, political affect, political economy, post-individualism, social rights 13 June 2013

Dr Martin O’Neill

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2014-15

This is a major research project in normative political philosophy, addressing the justice and justification of a number of specific real-world economic institutions. Its aim is to make fuller sense of emerging ideas of “predistribution”, questioning whether predistributive strategies can generate a positive direction for future progress towards more just and democratic societies. In particular, the primary area of examination will be designing and realizing a more democratic financial system, with a particular focus on the justifiability and plausibility of ideas relating to the democratization of capital investment.

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Discipline, Dissent and Dispossession

Lara Montesinos Coleman international relations, movements, political affect, post-individualism, social relations, social rights 3 June 2013

Dr Lara Montesinos Coleman

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2014-16

Dominant accounts of resistance to “neoliberal globalization” too often read resistance off theories of global order or presume situated struggles to be manifestations of a global resisting subject. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the variegated texture of dissent, or to how anti-systemic struggles are routinely nullified – drawn into the very processes of order-building they profess to contest – through a nexus of interventions organized around apparently emancipatory values. This project seeks to establish a deeper understanding of what is at stake in the interplay between anti-systemic struggles and the more widely-dispersed modes of political control that may be directed toward and through practices of dissent.

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Posthuman Security: An Integrated Ethical Framework

Audra Mitchell political science, post-humanism, post-individualism, social relations, social rights, war & peace 3 June 2013

Dr Audra Mitchell

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2014-15

The purpose of this project is to develop a framework that will enable security actors to respond to the ethical challenges raised by nonhumans in situations such as wars and disasters. In existing security discourses, human beings are framed as the only relevant actors, in both ethical and pragmatic terms. Yet security situations are shaped by a range of nonhumans that Bruno Latour terms ‘actants’: beings that can collectively affect change in the world without possessing agency, subjectivity, or intentionality.

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The Traffic in Women: Gender, Mobility, and Migration Control in the Twentieth Century World

Julia Laite decolonisation, gender, migration, social rights 3 June 2013

Professor Julia Laite

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2014-15

There is immense popular and academic interest in sex trafficking in the twenty first century, in an era marked by mass labour migration and economic and gender inequality. The phenomenon of sex trafficking–and concerns about it–have a very long history. Yet historians up until now have not provided the social sciences with any in-depth historical account of how the development of the globalized economy and the rise in working women’s migration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was related to sexual trafficking and migrant prostitution. While there has been some work on the construction of migration barriers and anti-trafficking policy, we are missing any long-duree sense of the influence and outcomes of these measures.

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No Entry: The Evils of Social Deprivation

Kimberley Brownlee human rights, political philosophy, post-individualism, social deprivation, social relations, social rights 3 June 2013

Professor Kimberley Brownlee

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2014

Debates about human rights neglect social rights. By ‘social rights’, I do not mean economic rights, such as basic subsistence, health, and education, which have received considerable attention. By ‘social rights’, I mean the rights that protect our fundamental interpersonal, associative, and community-membership needs irrespective of our economic circumstances. The project aims to remedy the neglect of these social needs by exploring 1) the theoretical and practical credentials of social human rights, and 2) the ethics and politics of sociability in acknowledging such rights. The project aims to show that we have more reason to attend to each other’s interpersonal needs than liberal thinking tends to recognise.

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The Politics of Names and Naming in India

Jacob Copeman post-individualism, social anthropology, social relations, social rights 13 January 2012

Dr Jacob Copeman

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2013

This research project analyzes the hitherto under-explored significance of naming practices in respect of caste and religion in India, with a particular focus on the names given to persons. Though frequently stigmatizing, caste names can be treated inventively: hidden, changed, or subject to revaluation. The project aims to explore historical strategies of naming and renaming whilst also bringing the study squarely into the present: what can naming strategies tell us about Indian society in a time of expedited social change?

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Sortition and the requirement for state impartiality in transitional and developing democracies

Olly Dowlen democracy, movements, political affect, social rights 12 January 2012

Dr Olly Dowlen

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2012-13

This study programme is designed to investigate how the use of randomly selected citizens in public offices could help to develop impartial state institutions and so add stability to developing democracies. By exploring and identifying problems relating to factionalism experienced by modern states in transition to democracy or seeking to maintain democratic progress, the study then uses several model schemes to assess how sortition could contribute towards their resolution.

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Loss in Childbearing in Malawi: Interpretations of Accountability and Blame

Bregje de Kok anthropology of health, care and the body, post-individualism, social relations, social rights 12 January 2012

Dr Bregje de Kok

ISRF EARLY CAREER FELLOW 2013

Loss in childbearing (maternal mortality; induced and spontaneous abortions; perinatal mortality) is an important problem in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), specifically, in Malawi. Regardless of sustained global initiatives, maternal mortality (MM) and pregnancy loss are unacceptably common. In Malawi, life-time risk of maternal death is 1 in 18 (UK: 1 in 8200). Delays in seeking and receiving care are important contributors to the burden. They are not fully explained by practical (e.g. costs, distance) and cognitive (lack of knowledge) barriers. We need more insight into how local rationales affect use and provision of care, in particular interpretations of responsibility, blame and women’s entitlement to care. For instance, in Malawi, some interpret obstructed labour as signalling a woman’s infidelity, who is kept at home until she confesses. Practitioners’ moral judgements matter too; they seem to underpin substandard maternal care in SSA. In various African contexts, practitioners have been found to verbally and physically abuse especially ‘deviant’ clients (those not attending antenatal care, teenage mothers).

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