PROGRAMME | THURSDAY 7 MARCH

10:00 – 18:00         
Books & Stands, Salon Davis (Library)

10:00 – 18:00
Exhibition of photos (Tobias Marschall & Claire Galloni d’Istria)

16:30 – 18:00
Teach-in with students: Research and photography, which dialectic?

As part of her MINT course on 'Art and Politics', Ruxandra Stoicescu will be organising a teach-in with students, linking the issues raised in certain works to artistic expression. This year, visual anthropology will be at the heart of this reflection, questioning the link between field research and photographic production. Public event.

Guests:

Tobias Marschall, Oltramare Chair Research Associate, Geneva Graduate Institute - https://www.tobiasmarschall.com/

Tobias Marschall is a visual anthropologist concerned with the nexus of the image, remoteness and endangerment. In his thesis (IHEID, 2022), he retraced a long-term visual ethnographic inquiry on the role of an image and notion of the Afghan Pamirs as an ultimate frontier. Through the study of three movements (borderland trade, pastoral economy and migration), he situated the modalities and effects of their representation in successive military, state and humanitarian interventions. Moving beyond a paradigm of salvage and finitude which informs previous engagements with the place, he located the role of a pervasive image and trope of the remote and endangered other in the multi-layered history of movements and differentiation which participated to shape the Afghan Pamirs as they are perceived today. Alongside, Tobias Marschall co-produced a feature-length documentary film on tourism and conducted two mandated studies on the costs of war and the impact of German official development assistance in Afghanistan.

Claire Galloni d’Istria

Claire Galloni d’Istria is an anthropologist and photographer, and a graduate of the Geneva Graduate Institute, where she obtained her doctorate with a thesis entitled “Qui a peur du ‘Grand méchant loup’? À propos des représentations du loup dans les Alpes franco-suisses”. She is interested in the relationship between humans and animals as non-humans, and in particular wild animals.

18:00
Music & Drinks with authors and podcasts editors

24 BOOKS

(monographs, edited books, yearbooks)

War-Torn Ecologies, An-Archic Fragments: Reflections from the Middle East
This collective book edited by Umut Yıldırım identifies a conceptual intersection between war, affect, and ecology from the Middle East (ICI Berlin Press, 2023). It creates a counter archive of texts by ethnographers and artists, and enables divergent worlds to share a conversation through the crevices of mass violence across species. Delving into vital encounters with mulberry trees, wild medicinal plants, jinns, and goats, as well as bleaker experiences with toxic war materials like landmines, this volume expands an ecological sensorium that works through displacement, memory, endurance, and praxis.F

Urban Politics of Human Rights
Increasingly, urban actors invoke human rights to address inequalities, combat privatisation, and underline common aspirations, or to protect vested (private) interests. The potential and the pitfalls of these processes are conditioned by the urban, and deeply political. These urban politics of human rights are at the heart of this collective book, edited and introduced by Janne Nijman, Barbara Oomen, Elif Durmuş, Sara Miellet and Lisa Roodenburg (Routledge, 2023).

Destiny / Destination
Cet ouvrage est né comme projet collaboratif de la rencontre de deux vagabonds de l’âme, un artiste aux multiples facettes, Carlo Vidoni, et un anthropologue itinérant, Alessandro Monsutti (emuse, avril 2023). Dans l’idée d’aller au-delà des angoisses et des peurs face à un monde perçu comme incertain, dans lequel la mobilité de certaines personnes est vécue comme une menace pour la stabilité de la vie d’autres personnes, les auteurs ont confronté les trajectoires de migrants qui ont quitté l’Italie ou sont arrivés en Italie à des moments différents et poussés par des motivations tout autant diverses.

Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Quest for Homogeneity in Interwar Europe
Interwar European majority-minority questions have been predominantly discussed in the context of the East until now. This volume, edited by Davide Rodogno, Emmanuel Dalle Mulle, Research Associate at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, and Mona Bieling, PhD Researcher in International History and Politics, challenges that geographical emphasis by examining both Eastern and Western European experiences (Bloomsbury, online April 2023, print May 2023).

De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens’ Assemblies
Citizen’s Assemblies (CAs) are flourishing around the world. Quite often composed of randomly selected citizens, CAs, arguably, come as a possible answer to contemporary democratic challenges. Democracies worldwide are indeed confronted with a series of disruptive phenomena such as a widespread perception of distrust and growing polarisation as well as low performance. Many actors seek to reinvigorate democracy with citizen participation and deliberation. CAs are expected to have the potential to meet this twofold objective. But, despite the deliberative and inclusive qualities of CAs, many questions remain open. The increasing popularity of CAs calls for a holistic reflection and evaluation on their origins, current uses and future directions. This handbook, edited by Min Reuchamps, Julien Vrydagh and Yanina Welp, Research Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, showcases the state of the art around the study of CAs and opens novel perspectives informed by multidisciplinary research and renewed thinking about deliberative participatory processes (De Gruyer, June 2023).

Deliberative Constitution-making: Opportunities and Challenges
Edited by Min Reuchamps and Yanina Welp, Routledge, August 2023.
This book explains deliberative constitution-making with a special focus on the connections between participation, representation and legitimacy and provides a general overview of what the challenges and prospects of deliberative constitution-making are today.

Cultural Nationhood and Political Statehood: The Birth of Self-Determination
This book (André Liebich, Routledge, 2023) explores the development of the idea that every nation – most commonly understood as a linguistic community – is entitled to its own state. Following several contemporary studies of nationalism, this book provides a critical examination of the peculiarly modern concurrence of cultural nations and political states as it developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author argues that this is one of the most fateful coincidences of modernity: so firmly engraved in today's consciousness that most scholars and policymakers assume the correlation of cultural nationhood and political statehood to be intellectually unproblematic, yet the consequences have been overwhelming. 

International Organizations and Research Methods: An Introduction
Scholars have studied international organisations (IOs) in many disciplines, generating important theoretical developments, yet a proper assessment and broad discussion of the methods used to research these organisations are lacking. Which methods are being used and in what ways? Do we need a specific methodology applied to the case of IOs? What are the concrete methodological challenges when doing research on IOs? This book, edited and introduced by Fanny Badache, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP), Leah R. Kimber and Lucile Maertens, new Associate Professor in International Relations/Political Science, provides an inventory of the methods developed in the study of IOs under the five headings of Observing, Interviewing, Documenting, Measuring, and Combining (Michigan Publishing, August 2023).

150 ans de contributions au développement du droit international / 150 Years of Contributing to the Development of International Law
In light of the 150th anniversary of the Institut de droit international, this book edited by Marcelo Kohen and Iris Van der Heijden has been published on its history and work. It contains 45 chapters (16 in French and 29 in English) written by prominent members, including former professors of the Graduate Institute Georges Abi-Saab, Lucius Caflisch, Marcelo Kohen and Jorge Viñuales (Éditions Pedone, September 2023). The book addresses the challenges and controversies that arose in the course of the work; the resolutions adopted, their impact and the way forward. It concludes with the position of the Institute in today’s world and its future. More info

Penser différentes manières de penser: théories de droit international
Les juristes – et les internationalistes n’y font pas exception – ont tendance à se focaliser sur la pratique du droit, souvent sans accorder une attention soutenue aux théories sous-jacentes qui en déterminent pourtant la production et la mise en œuvre. Ce livre d’Andrea Bianchi se veut une tentative de remuer l’eau dans laquelle, en tant qu’internationalistes, nous nageons (Dalloz, mars 2023). Il propose une introduction à différentes approches du droit et sensibilités à son égard. Cet ouvrage, traduit en français et présenté par Andrea Hamann, professeure en droit public, est paru originalement en anglais en 2016 chez Cambridge university Press

Guerres civiles?
La notion de guerre civile est utilisée pour qualifier des réalités très hétérogènes allant des guerres internes, souvent à dimension internationale, aux situations de conflits politiques, sociaux et culturels. En interrogeant sa pertinence, ce numéro de Monde commun coordonné par Franck Mermier et Alessandro Monsutti a pour ambition d’aller au-delà des catégorisations, qu’elles relèvent des sciences sociales ou du droit international (no 8, Presses Universitaires de France, avril 2023). Il propose de revisiter l’actualité des guerres contemporaines, de l’Afghanistan au Yémen, en passant par la Syrie, l’Éthiopie et la Birmanie, en retraçant les lignes de force, les dynamiques et les représentations vernaculaires de ces conflits hors du cadre géopolitique par lequel ils sont souvent perçus.

Annuaire de l’Institut de droit international = Yearbook of the Institute of International Law
Marcelo Kohen and Iris van der Heijden are the editors of this IIL yearbook (80e session (online), 2021, Deliberations, vol. 82, 2020–2021, Pedone, published January 2023).

The Many Paths of Change in International Law
This book, edited an introduced by Nico Krisch and Ezgi Yildiz, Research Affiliate at the Global Governance Centre (GGC), presents the first comprehensive account exploring how international law changes through means other than treaty-making and includes a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding change in international law (Oxford University Press, November 2023).

Systems Thinking in International Education and Development: Unlocking Learning for All?
Underlining the urgency, scale and complexity of the crisis of declining student learning trajectories despite significant financial investments and reform efforts, this book edited by Moira V. Faul, Director of Research and Executive Director, NORRAG, and Laura Savage proposes systems thinking as a way of understanding the global education crisis and to drive the real change that is needed to achieve SDG4 (Edward Elgar, January 2023).

Agricultural Commercialization, Gender Equality and the Right to Food: Insights from Ghana and Cambodia
Edited by Joanna Bourke Martignoni, Christophe Gironde, Christophe Golay, Elisabeth Prügl, Dzodzi Tsikata (Routledge), this volume explores agricultural commercialization from a gender equality and right to food perspective. Agricultural commercialization, involving not only the shift to selling crops and buying inputs but also the commodification of land and labour, has always been controversial. Strategies for commercialization have often reinforced and exacerbated inequalities, been blind to gender differences and given rise to violations of the human rights to food, land, work and social security. While there is a body of evidence to trace these developments globally, impacts vary considerably in local contexts. This book systematically considers these dynamics in two countries, Cambodia and Ghana. 

Cinematic Portrayals of African Women and Girls in Political Conflict
The role of cinema is important in providing information about the situation of women and girls in situations of political conflict, and the main characters often also become signifiers of wider social, political and economic ideas, at both global and local levels. Drawing on fictional and biographical cinematic representations, Norita Mdege, Research Fellow at the Gender Centre, considers films covering a range of different regions, experiences, historical periods and other contexts, to draw a nuanced picture of African women and girls who participate in or are affected by African political conflicts (Routledge, October 2023). The films are analysed using a decolonial feminist cultural approach, which combines cultural approaches, African feminisms and the contrapuntal method to ensure an inter-textual, intersectional and decolonial examination. The author engages with multiple themes and topics, including nationalism, nation-building, neocolonialism, memory, history, women’s and girls’ agency and activism.

Between Forbearance and Audacity: The European Court of Human Rights and the Norm against Torture
When international courts are given sweeping powers, why would they ever refuse to use them? Ezgi Yildiz, Research Affiliate at the Global Governance Centre, explains how and when courts employ strategies for institutional survival and resilience: forbearance and audacity, which help them adjust their sovereignty costs to preempt and mitigate backlash and political pushback (Cambridge University Press, November 2023). By systematically analysing almost 2,300 judgements from the European Court of Human Rights from 1967 to 2016, the author traces how these strategies shaped the norm against torture and inhumane or degrading treatment. 

The Lives of Extraction: Identities, Communities and the Politics of Place
The volume n° 15 of International Development Policy has released two volumes on extraction  (no. 15, Graduate Institute Publications and Brill-Nijhoff, 2023):, edited by Filipe Calvão, Matthew Archer and Asanda Benya, offers new perspectives from five continents on the paradoxes and futures of green extractivism, with critical and nuanced analyses of the social, cultural and political dimensions of extraction. 

The Afterlives of Extraction: Alternatives and Sustainable Futures
This volume  (no. 16, Graduate Institute Publications and Brill-Nijhoff, 2023), edited by Filipe Calvão, Asanda Benya and Matthew Archer, offers new perspectives from five continents on the complex and enduring legacies of resource extraction and demonstrates the alarming obduracy of the logic of extractivism, even – and perhaps especially – in the growing support for the so-called green transition.

Indigenous Peoples and Climate Justice: A Critical Analysis of International Human Rights Law and Governance
Giada Giacomini, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for International Environmental Studies (CIES), provides a new interpretation of international law specifically dedicated to Indigenous peoples in the context of a climate justice approach (Palgrave Macmillan, October 2022). She presents a critical analysis of past and current developments at the intersection of human rights and international environmental law and governance. The book suggests new ways forward and demonstrates the need for a paradigmatic shift that would enhance the meaningful participation of Indigenous peoples as fundamental actors in the conservation of biodiversity and in the fight against climate change.

The Climatization of Global Politics
This volume, edited by Stefan Aykut and Lucile Maertens, examines the process through which climate change is transforming global governance, as both an increasingly central issue on the international stage and an increasingly structured policy domain with its specific modes of governing, networks of actors, discourses, and knowledge practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). Since 2007, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has debated the security implications of climate change on several occasions.

Reflections: Understanding Our Use and Abuse of Water
Water is central to all life, but we use it to destroy. Water can nourish, but we use it to starve. It can cleanse and unify, but we ensure it contaminates and divides. The consequences of continuing to desecrate or beginning to restore water’s inner grace are tremendous – and will reflect as much on us as portend our future. Drawing upon twenty-five years of professional work as a water engineer, negotiator and scholar, Mark Zeitoun provides a unique insider’s account of this phenomenon (Oxford University Press, May 2023). He explains how unchecked assumptions about water mix with political and economic systems to create an insatiable and ruinous thirst for ever more water. 

Atomized Incorporation: Chinese Workers and the Aftermath of China’s Rise
Sungmin Rho examines why the Chinese regime selectively tolerates workers’ collective action within single factories and what this means for the country’s long-term political resilience (Cambridge University Press, June 2023). She investigates the implications of state-labour relations in contemporary China and suggests that it has evolved away from overt coercion to limited incorporation. Based on two years of in-depth fieldwork, she uncovers how ordinary workers think, believe and behave in this changing socio-political environment.

The Making of the European Monetary Union: 30 Years since the ERM Crisis
September 2022 marked the 30th anniversary of the Exchange Rate Mechanism crisis, a seismic event which shook the continent and caused a severe recession to spread rapidly across European economies. The crisis also arguably produced the intellectual and political impulse needed to reinforce the ultimate adoption of a single, common currency in the form of the euro. The essays in this new CEPR eBook, edited and with a foreword by Giancarlo Corsetti, Galina Hale and Beatrice Weder di Mauro, discuss the origins of the crisis and frame it within a broader European historical and political perspective (CEPR Press, February 2023).

ORGANISATION

Président: Cédric dupont

Support: Marc Galvin, Yves Corpataux, Guillaume Pasquier, Ruxandra Stoicescu

Partnership: Research Office, Library, The Fab, Communication Services