ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The everyday lives of contemporary youths are awash with chemicals and pharmaceutical compounds to boost pleasure, moods, sexual performance, vitality, appearance and health. Nevertheless, most studies of chemical use among young people have focused on the abuse of specific recreational drugs and their role within deviant youth sub-cultures. Instead of explaining drug abuse with the purpose of controlling it, this project aims to examine the pervasive use of chemicals from the perspectives of youths themselves. It aims to understand what chemical and pharmaceutical substances, and not only illicit narcotics, ‘do’ for youths. How are chemicals a part of their everyday lives? What role do they play in calming their fears or in achieving their dreams and aspirations? How can we understand the ways in which chemicals affect their bodies and minds? The theoretical innovation promised by this project lies in its combining of disciplines – most notably medical anthropology, science and technology studies and youth studies – to formulate a new groundbreaking framework for understanding the complex sociality of chemicals in youths’ everyday lives. The framework will have both scientific and societal impact. Ethnographic research will be conducted in four medium-sized cities: Marseille in France, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Makassar in Indonesia, and Batangas in the Philippines.

2 489 967 €

Start date: 2013-06-01, End date: 2018-05-31

The aim of this project is to write a history of the Muslim paradise and hell. Researchers (PI, RF and two doctoral researchers) will assess the extent to which Islamic traditions favour or reject a view of human existence as directed toward the otherworld. They will do so by examining a variety of intellectual traditions from the inception of Islam in the 7th century CE until today. The focus of investigation will not just be on the ‘high tradition’ of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, but also on mystical, philosophical, artistic and ‘popular’ traditions, thereby avoiding a monolithic, essentialising account of Islam’s attitude toward the hereafter. As has been argued, the relationship between this world (dunya) and the otherworld (akhira) is as important to Islam as the mind/body dualism is to the intellectual history of the West. However, no sustained effort of analysis has been made in modern Islamic Studies to reflect on the dunya/akhira relationship, and on the boundary that separates the two. This project will be the first comprehensive and systematic attempt in this direction. Five axes of research will underlie this endeavor: (1) the eschatological imaginaire, (2) material culture and the arts, (3) theology and law, (4) mysticism and philosophy, and (5) modern and contemporary visions of the hereafter. The project (proposed duration: 48 months), which is to begin on 1 March 2011, will be based at the Utrecht University and led by Dr Christian Lange (PhD Harvard, 2006, 70%), currently Lecturer in Islamic Studies at New College/School of Divinity. The research team will include one research assistant (100%, 45 months) and two doctoral researchers (100%, 36 months). Financial support is solicited to facilitate the survey of manuscripts and manuscript research in various collections in North America, Europe and Asia, and to help organise two scholarly symposia in Islamic eschatology and one comparative conference.

978 368 €

Start date: 2011-03-01, End date: 2015-04-30

The proposed research will analyze the rising phenomenon of transnational arbitrations between private economic actors and public law bodies as a mechanism of global regulatory governance. It breaks with the prevailing view that arbitration involves no more than settling individual disputes and hypothesizes instead that arbitrators generate the rules governing public-private relations rather independently of specific domestic legal systems and their democratic processes, and thereby prospectively steer and restrict government conduct. The body of law thus crafted by arbitral tribunals is what the project designates as lex mercatoria publica, in allusion to the a-national law generated by arbitral tribunals in international private-private disputes. Unlike existing research, the proposed project will provide a comprehensive (historic, sociological, political, economic, and legal) perspective on the lex mercatoria publica and explore its legitimacy. It will, by empirically charting the modern and historic practice of private-public arbitration, describe and analyze the content of the lex mercatoria publica and develop, through comparative law research, normative criteria to assess the legitimacy of private-public arbitrations in democratic societies that are based on the rule of law. The research will result in a comprehensive online database and a codification of both the principles of private-public arbitration and of the lex mercatoria publica as developed and applied by arbitral tribunals. The project will enable arbitrators, judges, and other international and national decision-makers to render more predictable, more circumspect, overall better, and fairer decisions concerning private-public arbitration. This will provide solid foundations for enhancing transnational private-public arbitration as an institution of global regulatory governance in the interest of better and more efficient cooperation between states and private economic actors in the global economy.

1 223 000 €

Start date: 2013-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28

During the last two decades, in the North as well as in the global South, new forms of Muslim marriages, such as unregistered, visiting, or temporary marriages, have become the target of public debate. State authorities, religious scholars, women’s organisations, (neo-)nationalists, and parents express concern about youngsters, and especially young and not so young women, entering into such marriages. These new, unconventional marriages, or existing forms in new contexts, are often discursively linked to sexual exploitation and religious radicalisation. But how do those involved in these new marriage forms evaluate them? This ethnographic project starts with an investigation of when and how these new marriages have become subject to public debate. The main empirical focus is on new marriage forms as social practices. What kinds of marriage forms and wedding celebration are emerging, who are participating in them, and how are they performed? Particular attention is paid to the intersections of gender and religion, and whether and how these new marriage forms are authenticated and authorized as Muslim marriages. The wider question this project addresses is what economic, political, religious and cultural work these new Muslim marriages do. Neo-liberalism has turned livelihood increasingly precarious (linking the marriage crisis to that of the male provider), while neo-nationalism has solidified divides between in-groups and out-groups. What kinds of subjectivities and socialities do these new marriage forms produce? How do they shape economic relations, group boundaries, religious ethics, and cultural forms? Fieldwork will be conducted in Europe, Kyrgyzstan, the Gulf, Indonesia, Lebanon and Morocco. These sites, linked through the circulation of persons, goods, and ideas, can be productively compared in terms of majority/minority positions, religious traditions, economic and migration histories, state-religion relations, gender structures, and cultural styles.

2 499 488 €

Start date: 2013-09-01, End date: 2019-08-31