Events
During its 36 month duration, the network will include six meetings.
1. Towards a History of Socioeconomic Rights: Network Planning Meeting
Institute for Advanced Study, Paris, 17-18 November 2015
2. Who Pays? Socioeconomic Rights, Political Economy and the Politics of Taxation. PROGRAMME
Centre for History, Sciences Po, Paris, 19-20 May 2016,
Questions: How have socioeconomic rights been financed? How have the politics of taxation figured in debates over these rights? How have economic theories inflected views on these rights? We will also take advantage of this occasion to include scholars in and around Paris to examine the historical relationship between religion and socioeconomic rights.
3. Health, Well-Being and Subsistence in the History of Socioeconomic Rights, Duties and Obligations. PROGRAMME
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), Berlin Social Science Center,10-11 November 2016
Questions: Is ‘biopower’ a useful analytical tool for explaining changing notions of citizenship, right and duties since the eighteenth century? How have obligations shifted back and forth between the state and individuals (subjects, citizens) in efforts to improve the health of populations since the eighteenth century? Have pandemics, such as malaria and AIDS, impacted upon the question of health as a socio-economic right?
4. Arguments for and against Socioeconomic Rights, Past and Present. PROGRAMME
Harvard Law School, March 20-21, 2017
Questions: How have socioeconomic rights been conceptualised, justified and contested? How have notions of moral, social and legal obligations figured in those debates since the late eighteenth century?
5. Humanitarianism and Charity: Expressions of or Alternatives to Socioeconomic Rights. PROGRAMME
Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) Mainz, 28-29 September 2017
Questions: How has humanitarianism and charity figured within the rhetoric of rights? How have the politics of obligation differed between voluntary and rights-based approaches to dealing with socio-economic crises and deprivations? How have states and NGO’s tried to balance providing for urgent needs with the more long-term development of a rights-based approach upheld by the sovereign state?
6. History Meets Advocacy: Socioeconomic Rights and Obligations, Past and Present PROGRAMME
University of Lausanne, 29-30 June 2018
Question: How is the history of obligation useful for approaching the challenges of contemporary rights advocacy today? Human Rights advocacy groups from nearby Geneva will interact with network members to reflect on how the history of socioeconomic rights can be useful for thinking about efforts to define and implement these rights today.