Project acronym ADVODID
Project Advocacy in Digital Democracy: Use, Impact and Democratic Consequences
Researcher (PI) Anne RASMUSSEN
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Country Denmark
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2019-COG
Summary Digital technology has fundamentally changed the action repertoire of political campaigning and advocacy in the last decade. Despite its fundamental role in contemporary political strategy and potential to affect the quality of democracy, there is still little systematic evidence to assess and compare the real effects of online and offline advocacy tools. ADVODID will implement the first large-scale quantitative project designed to provide rich correlational and causal evidence on the effects of advocacy on citizens and policymakers, in both online and offline settings. It sets out to address - theoretically and empirically - the potentials and challenges for modern democracies that arise from digital advocacy tools. Its novelty lies in analyzing the use, impact and democratic consequences of digital advocacy strategies by assessing interactions of advocacy groups with both citizens and political representatives in a diverse set of eight countries (Australia, Chile, Denmark, India, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the US). ADVODID will collect data on the advocacy agenda and strategy use of at least 400 carefully sampled advocates in these countries, and will assess agenda congruence with political and public agendas, and their dynamic development over time. Correlational analyses of different measures of advocacy success will be complemented by field experiments in cooperation with advocates in two countries, to supply causal evidence on how advocacy affects the positions and actions of policymakers and citizens. The project’s rich datasets will be used to assess and refine theories of democratic representation and the role of digital advocacy across different types of policy issues. ADVODID will greatly advance understanding of how modern advocacy impacts its target audiences and potentially changes participatory democracy. Its findings will have interdisciplinary and social relevance and inform ways to strengthen representative democracy in an online age.
Summary
Digital technology has fundamentally changed the action repertoire of political campaigning and advocacy in the last decade. Despite its fundamental role in contemporary political strategy and potential to affect the quality of democracy, there is still little systematic evidence to assess and compare the real effects of online and offline advocacy tools. ADVODID will implement the first large-scale quantitative project designed to provide rich correlational and causal evidence on the effects of advocacy on citizens and policymakers, in both online and offline settings. It sets out to address - theoretically and empirically - the potentials and challenges for modern democracies that arise from digital advocacy tools. Its novelty lies in analyzing the use, impact and democratic consequences of digital advocacy strategies by assessing interactions of advocacy groups with both citizens and political representatives in a diverse set of eight countries (Australia, Chile, Denmark, India, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the US). ADVODID will collect data on the advocacy agenda and strategy use of at least 400 carefully sampled advocates in these countries, and will assess agenda congruence with political and public agendas, and their dynamic development over time. Correlational analyses of different measures of advocacy success will be complemented by field experiments in cooperation with advocates in two countries, to supply causal evidence on how advocacy affects the positions and actions of policymakers and citizens. The project’s rich datasets will be used to assess and refine theories of democratic representation and the role of digital advocacy across different types of policy issues. ADVODID will greatly advance understanding of how modern advocacy impacts its target audiences and potentially changes participatory democracy. Its findings will have interdisciplinary and social relevance and inform ways to strengthen representative democracy in an online age.
Max ERC Funding
1 986 922 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-08-01, End date: 2026-07-31
Project acronym AnCon
Project A Comparative Anthropology of Conscience, Ethics and Human Rights
Researcher (PI) Tobias William Kelly
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary This project is a comparative anthropology of conscience, ethics and human rights. Numerous international human rights documents formally declare their commitment to protect freedom of conscience. But, what is conscience and how do we know it when we see it? How do we distinguish it from self-interest or fanaticism? And what happens when the concept, often associated with a distinct Christian or liberal history, travels across cultural boundaries? The project will examine the cultural conditions under which claims to conscience are made possible, and the types of claims that are most persuasive when doing so. The project addresses these issues through the comparative analysis of three case studies: British pacifists, Sri Lankan activists, and Soviet dissidents. These case studies have been carefully chosen to provide globally significant, but contrasting examples of contests over the implications of claims to conscience. If claims of conscience are often associated with a specifically liberal and Christian tradition, mid-twentieth century Britain can be said to stand at the centre of that tradition. Sri Lanka represents a particularly fraught post-colonial South Asian counterpoint, wracked by nationalist violence, and influenced by ethical traditions associated with forms of Hinduism and Buddhism. Soviet Russia represents a further contrast, a totalitarian regime, where atheism was the dominant ethical language. Finally, the project will return specifically to international human rights institutions, examining the history of the category of conscience in the UN human rights system. This project will be ground breaking, employing novel methods and analytical insights, in order to producing the first comparative analysis of the cultural and political salience of claims of conscience. In doing so, the research aims to transform our understandings of the limits and potentials of attempts to protect freedom of conscience.
Summary
This project is a comparative anthropology of conscience, ethics and human rights. Numerous international human rights documents formally declare their commitment to protect freedom of conscience. But, what is conscience and how do we know it when we see it? How do we distinguish it from self-interest or fanaticism? And what happens when the concept, often associated with a distinct Christian or liberal history, travels across cultural boundaries? The project will examine the cultural conditions under which claims to conscience are made possible, and the types of claims that are most persuasive when doing so. The project addresses these issues through the comparative analysis of three case studies: British pacifists, Sri Lankan activists, and Soviet dissidents. These case studies have been carefully chosen to provide globally significant, but contrasting examples of contests over the implications of claims to conscience. If claims of conscience are often associated with a specifically liberal and Christian tradition, mid-twentieth century Britain can be said to stand at the centre of that tradition. Sri Lanka represents a particularly fraught post-colonial South Asian counterpoint, wracked by nationalist violence, and influenced by ethical traditions associated with forms of Hinduism and Buddhism. Soviet Russia represents a further contrast, a totalitarian regime, where atheism was the dominant ethical language. Finally, the project will return specifically to international human rights institutions, examining the history of the category of conscience in the UN human rights system. This project will be ground breaking, employing novel methods and analytical insights, in order to producing the first comparative analysis of the cultural and political salience of claims of conscience. In doing so, the research aims to transform our understandings of the limits and potentials of attempts to protect freedom of conscience.
Max ERC Funding
1 457 869 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-08-01, End date: 2021-01-31
Project acronym APOLOGY
Project Political Apologies across Cultures
Researcher (PI) Julieette Schaafsma
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT BRABANT
Country Netherlands
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary In the past decades, there has been a considerable rise in the number of apologies offered by states for injustices and human rights violations. Among transitional justice scholars, there is significant debate about how useful such apologies are. Whereas some have applauded these gestures as an important step in peacemaking processes, others have argued that they may not fit in all cultures and may even be a risky tool for peacemaking. Unfortunately, theorizing and research in the field of transitional justice is still in its infancy and has not systematically addressed questions of cross-cultural variability yet. So, at present, we do not know whether political apologies are a universally viable way to restore justice and harmony. My project addresses this challenge. Using an innovative, interdisciplinary, and multi-method approach with in-depth interviews, (experimental) surveys, and content analyses of apologies, I analyze whether there are universals in how political apologies are valued, expressed, and interpreted or whether this varies as a function of cross-cultural differences in key values (collectivism and individualism) and norms (face and honor). Based on these findings, I build a theoretical framework that will fundamentally advance our understanding of the potential value and role of apologies in transitional justice processes. This project breaks new ground because it is the first to take the difficult step to collect cross-cultural data to examine whether key assumptions regarding political apologies hold across cultures. It is also the first in this area to use a multi-method approach, which makes it possible to take into account the complex reality of political apologies. Combining insights from transitional justice, cross-cultural psychology and anthropology, this project places theorizing on transitional justice on a much firmer footing and paves the way to more cross-culturally valid models to restore justice and promote reconciliation.
Summary
In the past decades, there has been a considerable rise in the number of apologies offered by states for injustices and human rights violations. Among transitional justice scholars, there is significant debate about how useful such apologies are. Whereas some have applauded these gestures as an important step in peacemaking processes, others have argued that they may not fit in all cultures and may even be a risky tool for peacemaking. Unfortunately, theorizing and research in the field of transitional justice is still in its infancy and has not systematically addressed questions of cross-cultural variability yet. So, at present, we do not know whether political apologies are a universally viable way to restore justice and harmony. My project addresses this challenge. Using an innovative, interdisciplinary, and multi-method approach with in-depth interviews, (experimental) surveys, and content analyses of apologies, I analyze whether there are universals in how political apologies are valued, expressed, and interpreted or whether this varies as a function of cross-cultural differences in key values (collectivism and individualism) and norms (face and honor). Based on these findings, I build a theoretical framework that will fundamentally advance our understanding of the potential value and role of apologies in transitional justice processes. This project breaks new ground because it is the first to take the difficult step to collect cross-cultural data to examine whether key assumptions regarding political apologies hold across cultures. It is also the first in this area to use a multi-method approach, which makes it possible to take into account the complex reality of political apologies. Combining insights from transitional justice, cross-cultural psychology and anthropology, this project places theorizing on transitional justice on a much firmer footing and paves the way to more cross-culturally valid models to restore justice and promote reconciliation.
Max ERC Funding
1 917 713 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2022-02-28
Project acronym ARTEFACT
Project The Global as Artefact: Understanding the Patterns of Global Political History Through an Anthropology of Knowledge -- The Case of Agriculture in Four Global Systems from the Neolithic to the Present
Researcher (PI) INANNA HAMATI-ATAYA
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Knowledge is an anthropological constant that is indissociable from the birth and interactions of human societies, but is at best a secondary concern for scholars of international relations and globalization. Contemporary global studies are thus unable to account for the co-constitution of knowledge and politics at a macro-scale, and remain especially blind to the historical patterns of epistemic development that operate at the level of the species as a whole and have shaped its global political history in specific, path-dependent ways up to now.
ARTEFACT is the first project to pursue a knowledge-centered investigation of global politics. It is uniquely grounded in an anthropological approach that treats globalization and human knowledges beyond their modern manifestations, from the longue-durée perspective of our species’ social history. 'The global as artefact' is more than a metaphor. It reflects the premise that human collectives 'make' the political world not merely through ideas, language, or norms, but primordially through the material infrastructures, solutions, objects, practices, and skills they develop in response to evolving structural challenges.
ARTEFACT takes agriculture as an exemplary and especially timely case-study to illuminate the entangled global histories of knowledge and politics, analyzing and comparing four increasingly inclusive 'global political systems' of the Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary eras and their associated agrarian socio-epistemic revolutions.
ARTEFACT ultimately aims to 1) develop an original theory of the global, 2) launch Global Knowledge Studies as a new cross-disciplinary domain of systematic empirical and theoretical study, and 3) push the respective boundaries of the anthropology of knowledge, global history, and international theory beyond the state-of-the-art and toward a holistic understanding that can illuminate how past trends of socio-epistemic evolution might shape future paths of global life.
Summary
Knowledge is an anthropological constant that is indissociable from the birth and interactions of human societies, but is at best a secondary concern for scholars of international relations and globalization. Contemporary global studies are thus unable to account for the co-constitution of knowledge and politics at a macro-scale, and remain especially blind to the historical patterns of epistemic development that operate at the level of the species as a whole and have shaped its global political history in specific, path-dependent ways up to now.
ARTEFACT is the first project to pursue a knowledge-centered investigation of global politics. It is uniquely grounded in an anthropological approach that treats globalization and human knowledges beyond their modern manifestations, from the longue-durée perspective of our species’ social history. 'The global as artefact' is more than a metaphor. It reflects the premise that human collectives 'make' the political world not merely through ideas, language, or norms, but primordially through the material infrastructures, solutions, objects, practices, and skills they develop in response to evolving structural challenges.
ARTEFACT takes agriculture as an exemplary and especially timely case-study to illuminate the entangled global histories of knowledge and politics, analyzing and comparing four increasingly inclusive 'global political systems' of the Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary eras and their associated agrarian socio-epistemic revolutions.
ARTEFACT ultimately aims to 1) develop an original theory of the global, 2) launch Global Knowledge Studies as a new cross-disciplinary domain of systematic empirical and theoretical study, and 3) push the respective boundaries of the anthropology of knowledge, global history, and international theory beyond the state-of-the-art and toward a holistic understanding that can illuminate how past trends of socio-epistemic evolution might shape future paths of global life.
Max ERC Funding
1 428 165 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2023-02-28
Project acronym ASA
Project Understanding Statehood through Architecture: a comparative study of Africa's state buildings
Researcher (PI) Julia Catherine GALLAGHER
Host Institution (HI) SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES ROYAL CHARTER
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2017-COG
Summary The project will develop a new ethnography of statehood through architecture. It goes beyond conventional approaches to statehood, which describe states as an objectively existing set of tools used to run a country, and critical approaches that understand them as discursive constructs. Instead, this research understands statehood as a result of the relationship between functions and symbols, and will read it through an innovative new methodology, namely a study of state architecture.
The study will focus on state buildings in Africa. African statehood, uncertain and often ambiguous, in many cases profoundly shaped by colonial heritages and post-colonial relationships, is reflected in classical-colonial, modernist-nationalist and post-modern or vernacular styles of architecture. African state buildings reveal the complex interplay of ideas, activities and relationships that together constitute an often uncomfortable statehood. They symbolise the state, embodying and projecting ideas of it through their aesthetics; they enable its concrete functions and processes; and they reveal what citizens think about the state in the ways they describe and negotiate them.
The study is comparative, multi-layered and interdisciplinary. It focuses on seven countries (South Africa, Tanzania, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea Bissau), exploring politics and statehood on domestic, regional and international levels, and drawing on theory and methods from political science, history, sociology, art and architecture theory. It employs innovative ethnographic methods, including the collection and display of photographs in interactive exhibitions staged in Africa to explore the ways citizens think about and use state buildings.
This project will provide an innovative reading of how African statehood is expressed and how it looks and feels to African citizens. In doing this, it will make a distinctive new contribution to understanding how statehood works everywhere.
Summary
The project will develop a new ethnography of statehood through architecture. It goes beyond conventional approaches to statehood, which describe states as an objectively existing set of tools used to run a country, and critical approaches that understand them as discursive constructs. Instead, this research understands statehood as a result of the relationship between functions and symbols, and will read it through an innovative new methodology, namely a study of state architecture.
The study will focus on state buildings in Africa. African statehood, uncertain and often ambiguous, in many cases profoundly shaped by colonial heritages and post-colonial relationships, is reflected in classical-colonial, modernist-nationalist and post-modern or vernacular styles of architecture. African state buildings reveal the complex interplay of ideas, activities and relationships that together constitute an often uncomfortable statehood. They symbolise the state, embodying and projecting ideas of it through their aesthetics; they enable its concrete functions and processes; and they reveal what citizens think about the state in the ways they describe and negotiate them.
The study is comparative, multi-layered and interdisciplinary. It focuses on seven countries (South Africa, Tanzania, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea Bissau), exploring politics and statehood on domestic, regional and international levels, and drawing on theory and methods from political science, history, sociology, art and architecture theory. It employs innovative ethnographic methods, including the collection and display of photographs in interactive exhibitions staged in Africa to explore the ways citizens think about and use state buildings.
This project will provide an innovative reading of how African statehood is expressed and how it looks and feels to African citizens. In doing this, it will make a distinctive new contribution to understanding how statehood works everywhere.
Max ERC Funding
1 870 665 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31
Project acronym Becoming Men
Project Becoming Men: Performing responsible masculinities in contemporary urban Africa
Researcher (PI) Eileen Marie Moyer
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Country Netherlands
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary This anthropological study examines the reconfiguration of masculinities in urban Africa over the last 30 years. Focusing on how practices and discourses of empowerment and equality shape male subjectivities, this study builds upon a significant body of nuanced research on masculinities in Africa. Since the mid-1980s academic and public discourses have depicted African masculinity as both precarious and predatory. Economic insecurity, urbanization, shifting gender norms, and growing gender parity have accompanied claims that African masculinity is ‘in crisis’. More recently, new stories of urban men embracing responsible fatherhood, condemning intimate partner violence, and demanding homosexual rights have emerged as exemplars of progressive possibility. To disentangle these seemingly competing claims about African masculinities and shed light on the scientific, political, and economic projects that shape them, this research theorises that the discourses and practices that pathologise and politicise masculinity are simultaneously performing and producing gendered selves on multiple scales in the name of gender equality. Recently, ‘male involvement’ has become a rallying cry throughout the vast global development assemblage, around which governments, NGOs, research networks, activists, and local communities fight gender inequality to promote health, economic development, and human rights. In this research, a range of male-involvement initiatives provides a lens through which to study how masculinities are diversely imagined, (re)configured, and performed through men’s engagements with this assemblage, in both its local and global manifestations. Multi-sited ethnographic research will focus on six cities where the PI has active research ties: Nairobi and Kisumu, Kenya; Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa; and Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, Tanzania.
Summary
This anthropological study examines the reconfiguration of masculinities in urban Africa over the last 30 years. Focusing on how practices and discourses of empowerment and equality shape male subjectivities, this study builds upon a significant body of nuanced research on masculinities in Africa. Since the mid-1980s academic and public discourses have depicted African masculinity as both precarious and predatory. Economic insecurity, urbanization, shifting gender norms, and growing gender parity have accompanied claims that African masculinity is ‘in crisis’. More recently, new stories of urban men embracing responsible fatherhood, condemning intimate partner violence, and demanding homosexual rights have emerged as exemplars of progressive possibility. To disentangle these seemingly competing claims about African masculinities and shed light on the scientific, political, and economic projects that shape them, this research theorises that the discourses and practices that pathologise and politicise masculinity are simultaneously performing and producing gendered selves on multiple scales in the name of gender equality. Recently, ‘male involvement’ has become a rallying cry throughout the vast global development assemblage, around which governments, NGOs, research networks, activists, and local communities fight gender inequality to promote health, economic development, and human rights. In this research, a range of male-involvement initiatives provides a lens through which to study how masculinities are diversely imagined, (re)configured, and performed through men’s engagements with this assemblage, in both its local and global manifestations. Multi-sited ethnographic research will focus on six cities where the PI has active research ties: Nairobi and Kisumu, Kenya; Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa; and Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, Tanzania.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 830 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym BEHAVE
Project New discrete choice theory for understanding moral decision making behaviour
Researcher (PI) Caspar Gerard CHORUS
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Country Netherlands
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Discrete choice theory provides a mathematically rigorous framework to analyse and predict choice behaviour. While many of the theory’s key developments originate from the domain of transportation (mobility, travel behaviour), it is now widely used throughout the social sciences.
The theory has a blind spot for moral choice behaviour. It was designed to analyse situations where people make choices that are optimal given their consumer preferences, rather than situations where people attempt to make choices that are right, given their moral preferences. This neglect of the morality of choice is striking, in light of the fact that many of the most important choices people make, have a moral dimension.
This research program extends discrete choice theory to the domain of moral decision making.
It will produce a suite of new mathematical representations of choice behaviour (i.e., choice models), which are designed to capture the decision rules and decision weights that determine how individuals behave in moral choice situations. In these models, particular emphasis is given to heterogeneity in moral decision rules and to the role of social influences. Models will be estimated and validated using data obtained through a series of interviews, surveys and choice experiments. Empirical analyses will take place in the context of moral choice situations concerning i) co-operative road using and ii) unsafe driving practices. Estimation results will be used as input for agent based models, to identify how social interaction processes lead to the emergence, persistence or dissolution of moral (traffic) equilibria at larger spatio-temporal scales.
Together, these proposed research efforts promise to generate a major breakthrough in discrete choice theory. In addition, the program will result in important methodological contributions to the empirical study of moral decision making behaviour in general; and to new insights into the moral aspects of (travel) behaviour.
Summary
Discrete choice theory provides a mathematically rigorous framework to analyse and predict choice behaviour. While many of the theory’s key developments originate from the domain of transportation (mobility, travel behaviour), it is now widely used throughout the social sciences.
The theory has a blind spot for moral choice behaviour. It was designed to analyse situations where people make choices that are optimal given their consumer preferences, rather than situations where people attempt to make choices that are right, given their moral preferences. This neglect of the morality of choice is striking, in light of the fact that many of the most important choices people make, have a moral dimension.
This research program extends discrete choice theory to the domain of moral decision making.
It will produce a suite of new mathematical representations of choice behaviour (i.e., choice models), which are designed to capture the decision rules and decision weights that determine how individuals behave in moral choice situations. In these models, particular emphasis is given to heterogeneity in moral decision rules and to the role of social influences. Models will be estimated and validated using data obtained through a series of interviews, surveys and choice experiments. Empirical analyses will take place in the context of moral choice situations concerning i) co-operative road using and ii) unsafe driving practices. Estimation results will be used as input for agent based models, to identify how social interaction processes lead to the emergence, persistence or dissolution of moral (traffic) equilibria at larger spatio-temporal scales.
Together, these proposed research efforts promise to generate a major breakthrough in discrete choice theory. In addition, the program will result in important methodological contributions to the empirical study of moral decision making behaviour in general; and to new insights into the moral aspects of (travel) behaviour.
Max ERC Funding
1 998 750 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-08-01, End date: 2022-12-31
Project acronym BeyondOpposition
Project Opposing Sexual and Gender Rights and Equalities: Transforming Everyday Spaces
Researcher (PI) Katherine Browne
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
Country Ireland
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2018-COG
Summary OPPSEXRIGHTS will be the first large-scale, transnational study to consider the effects of recent Sexual and Gender Rights and Equalities (SGRE) on those who oppose them, by exploring opponents’ experiences of the transformation of everyday spaces. It will work beyond contemporary polarisations, creating new possibilities for social transformation. This cutting-edge research engages with the dramatically altered social and political landscapes in the late 20th and early 21st Century created through the development of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans, and women’s rights. Recent reactionary politics highlight the pressing need to understand the position of those who experience these new social orders as a loss. The backlash to SGRE has coalesced into various resistances that are tangibly different to the classic vilification of homosexuality, or those that are anti-woman. Some who oppose SGRE have found themselves the subject of public critique; in the workplace, their jobs threatened, while at home, engagements with schools can cause family conflicts. This is particularly visible in the case studies of Ireland, UK and Canada because of SGRE. A largescale transnational systematic database will be created using low risk (media and organisational discourses; participant observation at oppositional events) and higher risk (online data collection and interviews) methods. Experimenting with social transformation, OPPSEXRIGHTS will work to build bridges between ‘enemies’, including families and communities, through innovative discussion and arts-based workshops. This ambitious project has the potential to create tangible solutions that tackle contemporary societal issues, which are founded in polarisations that are seemingly insurmountable.
Summary
OPPSEXRIGHTS will be the first large-scale, transnational study to consider the effects of recent Sexual and Gender Rights and Equalities (SGRE) on those who oppose them, by exploring opponents’ experiences of the transformation of everyday spaces. It will work beyond contemporary polarisations, creating new possibilities for social transformation. This cutting-edge research engages with the dramatically altered social and political landscapes in the late 20th and early 21st Century created through the development of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans, and women’s rights. Recent reactionary politics highlight the pressing need to understand the position of those who experience these new social orders as a loss. The backlash to SGRE has coalesced into various resistances that are tangibly different to the classic vilification of homosexuality, or those that are anti-woman. Some who oppose SGRE have found themselves the subject of public critique; in the workplace, their jobs threatened, while at home, engagements with schools can cause family conflicts. This is particularly visible in the case studies of Ireland, UK and Canada because of SGRE. A largescale transnational systematic database will be created using low risk (media and organisational discourses; participant observation at oppositional events) and higher risk (online data collection and interviews) methods. Experimenting with social transformation, OPPSEXRIGHTS will work to build bridges between ‘enemies’, including families and communities, through innovative discussion and arts-based workshops. This ambitious project has the potential to create tangible solutions that tackle contemporary societal issues, which are founded in polarisations that are seemingly insurmountable.
Max ERC Funding
1 988 652 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-10-01, End date: 2024-09-30
Project acronym BlockchainGov
Project In Blockchain We Trust(Less): The Future of Distributed Governance
Researcher (PI) Primavera Margot Maria Sasa Gravier DE FILIPPI
Host Institution (HI) CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
Country France
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2019-COG
Summary The general malaise of liberal democracies—characterized by a gradual erosion of trust in traditional institutions (such as banks) and new intermediaries (e.g. social media)—has spurred the development of new blockchain-based applications (like Bitcoin) that allegedly obviate the need for trust. Often described as a “trustless” technology, blockchain’s potential for disintermediation has been touted as a catalyst of innovation that could displace existing power structures. But is it shifting power away from former centers of power only to create new ones, or can it lead to an actual new organisation of power?
BlockchainGov is an interdisciplinary project that will study the impact of blockchain technology on new and existing governance structures, and its consequences for legitimacy and trust.
First, it will investigate the governance of existing blockchain systems, and analyse the power dynamics at play within these systems.
Second, it will examine the legitimacy and long-term sustainability of existing attempts at distributed governance, through the lenses of legal and political theory.
Third, it will explore the potential of blockchain technology to support new models of distributed governance providing an architecture for decentralized and participatory decision-making with attributes of transparency and accountability.
Last, it will experiment with these new models at different levels of governance, from the community level to the global governance level.
The project will open a new field of scholarship on “distributed governance” that uniquely combines the disciplines of computer science, political science and law. It will provide key empirical and theoretical contributions to science, with important policy implications to the broader questions of global governance.
Bringing this project to life requires a funding scheme compatible with a high-risk/high-gain vision to finance a fully dedicated and highly motivated research team with multidisciplinary skills.
Summary
The general malaise of liberal democracies—characterized by a gradual erosion of trust in traditional institutions (such as banks) and new intermediaries (e.g. social media)—has spurred the development of new blockchain-based applications (like Bitcoin) that allegedly obviate the need for trust. Often described as a “trustless” technology, blockchain’s potential for disintermediation has been touted as a catalyst of innovation that could displace existing power structures. But is it shifting power away from former centers of power only to create new ones, or can it lead to an actual new organisation of power?
BlockchainGov is an interdisciplinary project that will study the impact of blockchain technology on new and existing governance structures, and its consequences for legitimacy and trust.
First, it will investigate the governance of existing blockchain systems, and analyse the power dynamics at play within these systems.
Second, it will examine the legitimacy and long-term sustainability of existing attempts at distributed governance, through the lenses of legal and political theory.
Third, it will explore the potential of blockchain technology to support new models of distributed governance providing an architecture for decentralized and participatory decision-making with attributes of transparency and accountability.
Last, it will experiment with these new models at different levels of governance, from the community level to the global governance level.
The project will open a new field of scholarship on “distributed governance” that uniquely combines the disciplines of computer science, political science and law. It will provide key empirical and theoretical contributions to science, with important policy implications to the broader questions of global governance.
Bringing this project to life requires a funding scheme compatible with a high-risk/high-gain vision to finance a fully dedicated and highly motivated research team with multidisciplinary skills.
Max ERC Funding
1 997 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
Project acronym CARP
Project "Making Selves, Making Revolutions: Comparative Anthropologies of Revolutionary Politics"
Researcher (PI) Martin Holbraad
Host Institution (HI) University College London
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "What kinds of self does it take to make a revolution? And how does revolutionary politics, understood as a project of personal as much as political transformation, articulate with other processes of self-making, such as religious practices? Comparative Anthropologies of Revolutionary Politics (CARP) seeks fundamentally to recast our understanding of revolutions, using their relationship to religious practices in diverse social and cultural settings as a lens through which to reveal revolutions’ varied capacities for self-making. Developing a comparative matrix of revolutionary settings in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere, CARP’s core objective is to investigate the differing permutations and dynamics of revolutionary ‘anthropologies’ in the original theological sense of the term, i.e. charting revolutionary politics in relation to varying conceptions of what it is to be human, and of how the horizons of people’s lives are to be understood in relation to divine orders of different kinds, in order to reveal how revolutions come to define what persons may be, deliberately setting the social, political, cultural and ultimately ontological coordinates within which people are made who they are. Bringing close ethnographic investigation to bear on conceptions of revolution, statecraft, and subjectivity in political theory, CARP will produce comprehensive political ethnographies of nine major case-studies, comparing systematically the relationship between revolution and religion in a selection of countries in the Middle East and Latin America. Four smaller-scale case-studies from Europe and Asia will add complementary dimensions to this comparative matrix. Providing much-needed empirical materials and analytical insight into the dynamic comingling of political and religious forms in the making of revolutionary selves, CARP’s ultimate ambition is to launch the comparative study of revolutionary politics as a major new departure for anthropological research."
Summary
"What kinds of self does it take to make a revolution? And how does revolutionary politics, understood as a project of personal as much as political transformation, articulate with other processes of self-making, such as religious practices? Comparative Anthropologies of Revolutionary Politics (CARP) seeks fundamentally to recast our understanding of revolutions, using their relationship to religious practices in diverse social and cultural settings as a lens through which to reveal revolutions’ varied capacities for self-making. Developing a comparative matrix of revolutionary settings in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere, CARP’s core objective is to investigate the differing permutations and dynamics of revolutionary ‘anthropologies’ in the original theological sense of the term, i.e. charting revolutionary politics in relation to varying conceptions of what it is to be human, and of how the horizons of people’s lives are to be understood in relation to divine orders of different kinds, in order to reveal how revolutions come to define what persons may be, deliberately setting the social, political, cultural and ultimately ontological coordinates within which people are made who they are. Bringing close ethnographic investigation to bear on conceptions of revolution, statecraft, and subjectivity in political theory, CARP will produce comprehensive political ethnographies of nine major case-studies, comparing systematically the relationship between revolution and religion in a selection of countries in the Middle East and Latin America. Four smaller-scale case-studies from Europe and Asia will add complementary dimensions to this comparative matrix. Providing much-needed empirical materials and analytical insight into the dynamic comingling of political and religious forms in the making of revolutionary selves, CARP’s ultimate ambition is to launch the comparative study of revolutionary politics as a major new departure for anthropological research."
Max ERC Funding
1 854 472 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-06-01, End date: 2019-05-31
