"The Family, Human Rights and Internationalism"

For more details please contact esser(at)mmg.mpg.de.

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Historical and historical-sociological research on human rights discourse and law has abounded in recent years. However, it has neglected one of the key issues that informed early thinking about human rights in the nineteenth century: the family as a protected category. This conference addresses this issue by approaching it from the perspective of global historical sociology. In this way, the conference also sheds important light on the historical diffusion of cultural and legal norms on the family and sexuality. It reflects on various religious and other concepts of the family and considers how they emerged and spread across the globe along with human rights. How have human rights law and discourse intersected with imaginaries of the family and sexuality? How has this connection taken shape in different historical contexts? And, how has it evolved from the late nineteenth to the twentieth century?

The conference brings together historians and historical sociologists interested in global norm dynamics related to the family through international law, international institutions, empires, and migration. Papers will focus on these issues from a historical perspective covering the nineteenth as well as the twentieth century. They will also consider various mechanisms through which norms on the family intersected with ideas about human rights, for example, through empires and their collapse; intellectuals; war; and, migration, amongst others. The conference features case studies on regions from around the globe, as well as those on relevant international organisations and individuals who have been influential in this regard.

Friday, 2 November 2018

9.30 Registration / coffee-tea

9.45 Welcome: Matthias Koenig (Göttingen) & Julia Moses (Sheffield/Göttingen)

10-11.15 Keynote I: Miloš Vec (Vienna), Family First: A Liquid Model of In- and Exclusion. Chair: Matthias Koenig (Göttingen)

11.15-11.30 Break

11.30-1.15 Panel I: Early Debates and Ideas. Chair: Rainer Bauböck (EUI/Göttingen)
Marco Duranti (Sydney), Catholicism, the Family, and the Deeper Origins of UN Human Rights Norms
Julia Moses (Sheffield/Göttingen), Human Rights, Civility and the Family in early International Law
Jannis Panagiotidis (Osnabrück), The Family, the Nation, and the Right to Free Movement: On the Making of Cross-Bloc Migration during the Cold War

1.15-2.15 Lunch

2.15-4.30 Women’s Rights, Sexuality and Human Rights. Chair: Marie-Claire Foblets (MPI for Social Anthropology, Halle)
Mariana Castrellon (Stanford), The Natural Family, The Colombian Feminist Movement, and the CEDAW: Did Cohabiting Women Matter?

Matthew Waites (Glasgow), Colonialism and the Regulation of Same-Sex Sexualities: A Historical-Sociological Comparative Analysis of Colonial Legacies in African Commonwealth States
Elizabeth Boyle (Minnesota), The Catholic Church, Family, and Women's Rights in World Society

Dörthe Engelcke (MPI International Private Law, Hamburg), The exemption of Christian family law in Jordan from the CEDAW debate: diffusion of international norms through legal borrowing?

7.30 Dinner at Restaurant Gaudí. Rote Str. 16, 37073 Göttingen.

SATURDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2018

9.30 Arrival / Coffee-tea

9.45-11 Keynote Lecture II: Glenda Sluga (Sydney), Human Rights in the Shaping of International Orders, 1814-1974. Chair: Dominic Sachsenmaier (Göttingen)

11-11.15 Break

11.15-1 Reproductive Rights. Chair: Julia Moses (Sheffield/Göttingen)

Isabel Heinemann (Münster), “In the Name of the Nuclear Family”? Reproductive Decision-Making and Human Rights Discourse in the Second Half of the 20th century

Paul van Trigt (Leiden), Disabled Reproduction? A History of the Right to have a Family in the United Nations’ Observances dedicated to People with Disabilities

Silke Hackenesch (Cologne), Human Rights, Civil Rights, or Children’s Rights? International Adoptions in Postwar America

1-2 Lunch / Concluding Discussion. Chair: Matthias Koenig (Göttingen) & Julia Moses (Sheffield/Göttingen)