Tag Archives Global Justice

Globalisation, international law and the elusive concept of ‘global justice’ by Jeff Handmaker and Karin Arts

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We all talk about the search for ‘global justice’, but what does it really mean, and how can international law help achieve it? The elusive concept of ‘global justice’ is discussed in a new book launched tomorrow at the ISS and edited by ISS scholars Jeff Handmaker and Karin Arts. This blog post shortly introduces the book, which seeks to show how legal vocabularies have framed the possibilities for mobilising international law as an instrument for attaining global justice.

THE ELUSIVE CONCEPT OF (GLOBAL) JUSTICE

Just as is the case with the term globalisation, notions of justice, and even more so global justice, have been elusive and difficult concepts to define. While questions on the rule of law still reveal a liberal leaning, broader questions have also come up, asking: how can law serve as an instrument of global justice?  Such questions explore among others the politics of state (non-)compliance with these norms and the strategic challenges involved in accomplishing global justice.[1]

 LAW AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR PURSUING GLOBAL JUSTICE

Similar to conceptualisations of justice, the function of law as an instrument for global justice is ambiguous, too. Law and legal institutions articulate bold promises, yet contain very definite limits to what they can deliver, let alone explain in relation to complex social phenomena.

Legal perspectives have a very different starting point than other scholarly perspectives, particularly within the social sciences. While there are numerous viewpoints among legal scholars about the content of law, its origins, interpretations, and the institutions created to enforce it, legal scholarship has generally resisted multi- or inter-disciplinary study.

On the other side of the scholarly plain, social scientists often misunderstand law. Law has been regarded as irrelevant, particularly by scholars studying culture in relation to identity, race, lifestyle, ritual, and other factors, conceptualising law and culture as ‘distinct realms of action and only marginally related to one another’. [2]

In our understanding, in so many respects law fulfils a central function in society, in political discourse and in social relations. But its resistance to other scholarly perspectives, and the way in which some legal scholars fail to critically address the normative, liberal bias embedded in law has limited our understanding of the complex interactions between politics and law, not to mention its potential as a vehicle for reaching global justice.

THE STRUCTURAL BIAS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

Martti Koskenniemi, whose work is a major intellectual reference point for the book, has argued that there is a ‘structural bias’ embedded within global governance institutions, itself a consequence of the fragmentation of international law.[3] According to this concept, international law is not the homogenous system it once was, but has evolved into ‘a wide variety of specialist vocabularies and institutions’.[4] However, the rhetoric of rights has lost its ‘transformative effect’ through over-legalistic explanations and is ‘not as powerful as it claims to be’.[5] Koskenniemi argues that one should look beyond the normative liberal tendency that underpins the world view of many lawyers, that is, to look beyond the content of law.

On the one hand, Koskenniemi argued that international law has been criticised as ‘too apologetic to be taken seriously’ because of its dependence on the political power, and thus the power politics of states.[6] On the other hand, international law has been considered to be too far removed from power politics and thus ‘too utopian’ (or speculative) to meet the challenges of a complex globalised world.[7]

Rather than forming an objective system of ‘concrete and normative’ and therefore ‘valid’ and ‘binding’ rules, as many lawyers claim them to be, Koskenniemi observed that international legal rules were, in fact, highly malleable.

From a different vantage point, in her chapter in our book, Barbara Oomen argues that realising human rights at the municipal level holds tremendous potential for fostering a culture of constitutionalism. Oomen suggests that Koskenniemi’s distinction between talking either ‘rabbitese’ or ‘duckalese’, respectively the language of politics or that of the law, might not be that simple in local practice.

This book as a whole shows in various ways how legal vocabularies have framed the possibilities for mobilising international law for global justice. In addition to showing how this legal mobilisation can potentially hold states, corporations or individuals accountable for violations of international law, numerous inconsistencies within the global liberal legal order are revealed.

References
[1] David Barnhizer, Effective Strategies for Protecting Human Rights (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001) and Christopher Lamont, International Criminal Justice and the Politics of Non-Compliance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010).
[2] Naomi Mezey, ‘Law as Culture’ (2001) 13 Yale Law Journal, 35-67 at 35.
[3] Martti Koskennimi ‘The politics of international law – 20 years later’ (2009) 20(1) European Journal of International Law, 7-19: at p. 9.
[4] Ibid., p. 12.
[5] Koskenniemi (2011), at p. 133.
[6] Ibid., p. 9.
[7] Ibid.

This blogpost is an adaptation of the introduction to our edited book Mobilising International Law for ‘Global Justice’ (2019, Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108586665), that is first launched at the International Institute of Social Studies on 30 November 2018.

About the authors:

JeffHandmakerISS_small

 

Jeff Handmaker is Senior Lecturer in Law, Human Rights and Development and csm_4fe244a1a72e59e9c42dc150abedd9c6-karin-arts_78559ee7d1 Karin Arts is Professor of International Law and Development, both at the ISS.

 

 

The Global North’s superhero complex and how Escobar can help us save ourselves by Carolyn Yu

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This week Arturo Escobar is delivering a lecture at the ISS on the topic of post-development. Escobar’s work on rethinking development is crucial in a time when the development field is still plagued by a superhero complex. This article sketches how his work contributes to the deconstruction of the Global North’s own portrayal as a saviour, and serves as a background to his lecture.

Oddly enough I find myself thinking of Hollywood superhero movies as I sit here writing about Arturo Escobar’s upcoming visit to ISS. Online advertisements relentlessly propose that I watch summer blockbusters while I am busy reading about Escobar and his work on development.

When I watch these blockbuster superhero movies, I always think about the extras running around getting squashed in the carnage, and how the audience is invited to see that the only solution to the tragic situation is a superhero to calm the chaos. In the latest generation of movies, we now have the trope of the self-aware superhero. Now, superheroes realise that in their interventions they have inadvertently killed many victims, or even that their very existence as superheroes relies on the villains and inevitably leads to the chaos, as they relentlessly save lives. As the movie draws to a close, the storytellers set up a sequel for the next summer by continually justifying the need for superheroes, and the plot neatly sidesteps the growing question of the superhero’s own involvement in creating the mayhem.

The superhero mentality can be heard also in the development industry. We don’t want to be involved but we have to be involved. How can we stand idly by and do nothing when the world is so full of inequality and unnecessary suffering? People are literally dying in front of us!

The saviour complex is a romantic story for the privileged among us in the Global North; private citizens and development practitioners alike. It is very tempting to leap into action when we are confronted with carefully constructed images like that pesky fly on that starving baby’s cheek. We hear horrible stories of oppression, poverty, and disease; yet, like this recent generation of superhero movies, we fail to question deeply enough the role of the interventionist countries in creating or exacerbating the story.

Escobar’s remedy

Now, to Arturo Escobar’s visit at the ISS. This celebrated anthropologist who has provoked many existential crises for development scholars and practitioners asks uncomfortable questions. He points to how the Global South has come to be seen as an impoverished and underdeveloped world and most of all, how it is framed as a place where the rescuers from the Global North can intervene (Escobar 1992).

His work on post-development is a call for all of us who are living a world of privilege to critique why rescuing and changing other peoples’ lives is still at the heart of development. Escobar states that whatever the context, it is the need to develop itself that must be questioned. At the core of development, you are dealing with an external definition of what the world should look like.

Escobar argues that development is not merely a bug that needs to be recoded and re-released– it is a faulty framework. Why is it that standards of living are largely produced by the privileged of the Global North, and why is their help needed at all? Buzzwords such as inclusive and sustainable development can only go so far when ideas of progress and good living are still overwhelmingly dictated by development institutions and governments from the Global North. Instead, development thinkers should be searching for alternatives to development.

Escobar, originally from Colombia and teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, shares alternative imaginaries and narratives to development drawn from his research and dialogues with Indigenous Colombian, Afro-Colombian, and peasant communities in Latin America (Escobar 2018). He shows how these societies are exercising their ability to live in line with their identities and their relations with not just other humans, but also to non-human and non-animal beings.

His argument is not that we must return to pre-colonial ways of living. This ignores how cultures, environments, and people change over time. We cannot ignore the problems and struggles that may have existed in history. Instead, the challenge is to recognise how industrialised, developed countries do not always have the answers about how to change ways for the better. This is a major shift away from the mainstream message of development with its linear views of what is progress and what is failure. Otherwise, imperialism and colonialism will continue to thrive through an imposition of foreign standards and norms (Escobar 1995).

Escobar sees today’s challenge is to think of a “pluriverse” — a world where many worlds fit. The concept he borrows from the Zapatistas of Chiapas (Escobar 2018: 16-17). He suggests that this new imaginary will expand our imagination of what is possible. His argument is for radical interdependence and understanding peoples’ roles in constructing the realities around them. His work provides ways forward that complicate the power dynamics inherent in our privileged world’s superhero complex.

The development industry needs to deconstruct its own portrayal as a saviour and recognise its continuing role in erasing pre-existing relations and forming new oppressions. Rather than continuing the same patronising imagery of a world of passive victims, Arturo Escobar’s radical interdependence imagines a radical equality, of worlds where no singular individual is the eternal consummate hero; of narratives that are complexly interwoven without one story overshadowing the rest. Global situations and conflicts may be dire, but we need a paradigm shift where foreign intervention is not always the default answer.

References
Escobar, A. (1995) ‘Introduction: Development and the Anthropology of Modernity’, in A. Escobar (ed.) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, pp. 3-20. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Escobar, A. (1992) ‘Planning,’ in W. Sachs (ed.) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, 132–145. London, New York: Zed Books.
Escobar, A. (2018) Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham, London: Duke University Press.

Carolyn Bliss Photo (1)About the author: 

Carolyn Yu is a recent graduate from the ISS MA program, majoring in Social Policy for Development and specialising in Women and Gender Studies. She is coordinating the events surrounding Arturo Escobar’s visit to ISS.

‘ISS celebrates its 65th anniversary with a new blog’ by Inge Hutter, rector of ISS

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About the author
Inge Hutter in pink
Inge Hutter, rector of the International Institute of Social Studies

Welcome to BLISS, the blog of the ISS on Global Development and Social Justice linking local communities to global action. The blog is launched on 12 October 2017, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the International Institute of Social Studies.

To celebrate this respectable age, several events have been organized this week at ISS. On Monday 9 October, Han ter Horst, sketched the establishment of NUFFIC and ISS in 1952, as twin institutions for higher education. In order to know where we are at present, and where we want to go in the future, it is important to realize where we come from and to be aware of our roots. Ter Horst pictured the atmosphere in The Netherlands in the early 1950s. The disillusions after the Second World War and decolonization of Indonesia, but also the optimism in rebuilding the Netherlands and the dream of a future where everyone –also those from the lower classes- would be able to improve their circumstances.

The ISS was founded by Dutch government and Dutch universities in 1952. Queen Juliana even mentioned the establishment of the International Institute of Social Studies in her famous speech at the United Nations. ISS thus started as a post-colonial initiative, in the first instance as a training institute for administrators from the former Dutch colony, Indonesia. Later, government officers from other then-so-called developing countries also came to ISS. From there, the MA in Development Studies developed. In the past 65 years, more than 13,000 students from all over the world have received a degree from ISS.

Since the turn of this century, the Institute has developed a stronger ambition towards academic excellence. In 2009, it became a part of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a consistent effort was made to raise the academic status of the institute. Today, we are proud that our academic output matches the benchmark of Europe’s top-ranking institutes of development studies. At the same time, ISS has retained its critical engagement. We engage in the current dynamics of global development and social justice through education, research and action. Much of our research puts the spotlight on people and communities that are marginalized by oppressive and exclusive forms of development.

The parameters of development have radically changed in the lifetime of ISS. Social media and digital developments have turned the world into a global space that is interconnected at all levels and where news travels extremely fast. The scope of research is no longer exclusively focused on the South, but concerns developments, inequalities and social justice in a global way, thus also in the global North.

Global challenges in relation to climate change, precariousness, migration and food security – to mention a few – are too complex to address in one piece of research, but our research findings can shed light on some aspects and contribute to discussing the bigger pictures. However, one of the drawbacks we face as researchers is that our output usually comes after a prolonged period of time, whereas developments in the ‘real’ world continue to happen at a fast pace. Often, research findings that could speak to those developments are not shared at all or in time, and thus fail to contribute to news-making, debates or policies, let alone have the potential to drive processes towards more inclusive, sustainable and just development.

At 65 years, therefore, ISS is proud to launch its blog. The blog series aims to provide a space where research ideas and findings are brought to the development community in a timely way. With the blog, ISS will address different audiences in policy, practice and the public at large. The blogs are grounded in ongoing research and speak to broader implications for current development trends and issues. Most importantly, the blogs will continue to uphold the best of ISS traditions: to (re)present the voices of people and communities that are marginalized in development. I hope many of the readers of the blog will add their voices to the blog and contribute to our blog on global development and social justice.