Obligations in World Society: Legal Perspectives and Intimate Experiences

November 30 -December 2, 2016

Prof. Julia Eckert, UNIBE

Prof. Sabine Strasser, UNIBE

Prof Stuart Kirsch, University of Michigan

Prof. Sarah Green, University of Helsinki

How do societies respond to questions of moralities and obligations on a global scale and how do social anthropologists deal with the challenges of transnational obligations? Entangled in global uncertainties and informed about all kinds of emergencies in "real time", mutual obligations across borders provoke growing contestations and anxieties as well as new options for solidarity and collaboration. Recently, a pile of books and special issues has been published in order to develop a critical perspective on moralities and to identify its various dimensions. Moral anthropology, seen already as a sub-discipline by some, contains relevant fields and timely issues such as humanitarianism, (corporate) social responsibility, precariousness, legal complexity and gendered violence. International justice is as important a field in these debates as care and female human rights. From a legal point of view, the perception of causal and moral links reaching far in space and time are ever more explicitly pronounced; on the other hand, the very complexity of these links often engenders a fragmentation of responsibility both in law as well as in moral commitment.

In this module we want to deal with the growing field of moral anthropology and with obligations as played out in different subjects from politics and law to sexuality and intimacy. We invite participants to examine their own research projects from the perspectives of global moral obligations in contexts of uncertainties. 

Ueberstorf

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