21 janJean-Michel Chaumont (Université Catholique de Louvain), « La responsabilité des experts », Vendredi 4 Février 2011

La responsabilité des experts : la convention internationale de 1949 sur la répression de la traite des êtres humains et l’exploitation de la prostitution

Jean-Michel Chaumont (UCL)

A propos de son ouvrage : Le mythe de la traite des blanches, La Découverte, 2009

Le Rapport du Comité spécial d’Experts sur la question de la traite des femmes et des enfants publié en deux parties (1927) par la Société des Nations offre l’exemple d’une mystification historique pleinement réussie. Aujourd’hui comme hier, il est donné comme un rapport scientifique sans équivalent (parce que rédigé au terme d’une enquête menée sur le terrain, grâce à des enquêteurs infiltrés notamment, dans 28 pays d’Europe et d’Amérique pendant deux ans) et dont les conséquences objectives furent majeures : il est censé d’une part avoir établi définitivement l’existence même de la traite des femmes, d’autre part le rôle causal majeur de la réglementation de la prostitution dans ce phénomène criminel et esclavagiste. A ce double titre, il fut une condition nécessaire de la Convention Onusienne de 1949 sur la répression de la traite des êtres humains et de l’exploitation de la prostitution. L’examen des archives, tant des 7 sessions du Comité d’Experts que de l’enquête proprement dite, révèle que les experts ont manipulé leurs données afin, surtout, de réaliser leurs objectifs idéologiques de lutte contre la prostitution.
A partir de ce constat, de nombreuses questions se posent relatives à l’expertise, à l’histoire de la protection internationale des droits humains et à la détermination des « formes modernes d’esclavage ».

Discutant : Emmanuel Decaux (Paris II)

CERI : 11.00 – 13.00 (salle du conseil)

30 novJack Snyder (Columbia University), « Religion and IR Theory », Tuesday November 2nd 2010

Jack Snyder (Columbia University)

Since September 11, 2001, religion has become a central topic in discussions about international politics. And yet the standard works of US international relations theory, which continue to shape much academic research, hardly mention religion. A handful of new works by young US international relations scholars have begun to fill this gap. The best of this new work is represented in Religion and International Relations Theory, edited by Jack Snyder, forthcoming from Columbia University Press in March 2011. Snyder’s overview of the project will focus on four approaches to integrating religion into theoretically-grounded international relations scholarship: (1) working within the traditional US paradigms of realism, liberalism, and social constructivism, (2) supplanting existing paradigms with a religion-centered theory, such as the “clash of civilizations” thesis, (3) analyzing secularisms as worldviews comparable to religions, and (4) treating religion as a variable in testable hypotheses about the causes of conflict international relations.

Discussant: Denis Lacorne (CERI)
CERI – Salle de conférences 5pm – 7pm

30 novMilja Kurki (Aberystwyth), « Causal Analysis », Tuesday November 3rd 2009

Milja Kurki (Aberystwyth University)

‘The normative and political dimensions of causal analysis’

Often the idea of causal analysis is separated from the analysis of normative issues and questions of moral and political responsibility, in IR and also in many circles in philosophy of social sciences. This tendency is generated by an unthinking acceptance and reproduction of a positivist fact-value distinction. When causal analysis is framed in non-positivist terms we can see not only that there is nothing a-normative or a-political about the analysis of causation, but also that complex issues arise concerning the exact relationship between the frameworks of causal analysis we use and our normative and political commitments. I will argue here that engaging in causal analysis is a deeply moral, normatively-loaded, and political matter, and moreover, that important issues are at stake in the kind of meta-theoretical frameworks we apply to causal analysis. Far from dismissing causal analysis as de-politicising, as has been the tendency in the interpretivist end of IR, we should recognise that it is around debates about causality, and frameworks of causal analysis, that much of the interesting moral and political debate in international relations takes place.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/interpol/en/research/MK%20project/Index.htm
CERI, 5-7 pm (salle de conférences rez-de-chaussée)

15 novRichard Price (UBC), « Moral Limit and Possibility in IR », Friday May 15th 2009

Richard Price (University of British Columbia)

Moral Limit and Possibility in IR

At what point, if any, is one to reasonably concede that the ‘realities’ of world politics require compromise from cherished principles or moral ends, and how do we really know we have reached an ethical limit when we seen one? Since social constructivist analyses of the development of moral norms tell us how we get moral change in world politics, that agenda should provide insightful leverage on the ethical question of ‘what to do.’ This talk identifies contributions of the social constructivist research agenda in International Relations for theorizing moral limit and possibility in global political dilemmas, engaging in particular international political theory and critical IR theory, and questions of the relationship of normative and empirical scholarship in IR.

CERI 10 am -12 pm