Abstracts and Bios - Spring 2009 Events
From the ‘Paris of the West Indies’ to the Antillean Pompeii: St. Pierre, Martinique, at the time of its decimation in 1902
John Cowley, 14 January 2009
Saint-Pierre, Martinique, was already an important trading centre at the time San Domingue broke from France to become Haiti, in 1802. Sustained metropolitan contact made the city much more open to radical ideas, and it became a focus for the black population’s opposition to slavery and also for defiant expressions of free association by the island’s ‘mixed-race’ inhabitants. By the time slavery was abolished in France’s overseas possessions (1848) these groups had come to dominate the municipal population, though primary power remained with the French colonial elite. The inhabitants called themselves Pierrotins. Full of its own self confidence, the settlement was sometimes called ‘the Paris of the West Indies.’ The locality was also a fount for black Caribbean-French cultural manifestations, including an influential creole carnival, and its musical associate, the biguine. Destroyed in the space of three minutes by the volcanic eruption of Mont Pelée on 8 May 1902, the city suddenly became an emblem of fatalism and, for some commentators, the epitome of wickedness, thereby decimated by a revengeful God. Others blamed ‘la catastrophe’ on maladministration.
Remembered with affection by Pierrotins not in residence at the time of the obliteration, something of the city’s character can be gauged both by events in its history, and reactions to its annihilation. Utilizing the resources of newspaper reports, tourist recollections, and historical discussions, elements of the municipality’s past will be explored in an endeavour to give shape to the romanticism of its ethos.
The Defence of Human Rights and the Right to Defend
Sara Chandler, 20 January 2009
The lecture will give a summary of the detailed findings of the August 2008 international lawyers' delegation to Colombia. The delegation was able to visit Bogota and 7 other regions where they met lawyers, human rights defenders and prosecutors, judges, victims and non governmental organisations involved in the defence of human rights. They also visited Universities and University Law Faculties running human rights programmes and Law Clinics.
A total of 42 delegates went from the UK, and joined lawyers from Latin America, Canada, France, Germany and Spain. Of particular interest has been the growing support for an independent bar association or law society in Colombia. Colombia is the only country in Latin America which does not have a national representative professional organisation and members of the delegation attended meetings with local lawyers who are working to create such an organisation. Human rights lawyers are at risk in Colombia and during the last 5 years the number of threats and assassinations has risen without any steps being taken to prevent these risks.
Sara Chandler is Director of Pro Bono Services for the College of Law and Associate Professor. She is also the Senior Supervising Solicitor at the Legal Advice Centre (Bloomsbury Centre, London). Her practice is in Housing (Landlord & Tenant) and she works with colleagues in the Legal Advice Centre, a social welfare law practice, including Employment, Asylum and Immigration and Social Security. Sara has general experience in training international pro bono lawyers, and a particular interest in Uganda, Zambia and Nigeria where she has worked with local Law Societies, NGOs and others in establishing networks of legal aid providers, and legal aid schemes.
She is an active member of CLEO and participates in the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education Conferences. She also participates in the Global Alliance for Justice Education, as well as the LILAC and Association of Law Teachers. Her education was at Swansea University, Newcastle University, London School of Economics. South Bank Polytechnic, and City Polytechnic. She completed articles and 3 years PQE in legal aid firms (Glazer Delmar in Peckham, and HCL Hanne & Co in Battersea), returning to the Law Centre movement before joining the College in 2003.
Sara is a member of the Law Society Council and a member of the Law Society International Human Rights Committee with responsibility for Colombia. She led the UK section of an international delegation of lawyers to Colombia in August 2008 to investigate the situation of human rights lawyers.
Climate Change Vulnerability and adaptation in Colombia
Andrea Lampis, 20 January 2009
The challenges posed by the two-way relationship between climate change and urban settlements require responses from a multi-disciplinary range of scientific fields as well as more developed inter-disciplinary frameworks. Over the next two decades, the production of new knowledge to unwind a number of interlocking environmental and developmental processes will be a key factor to provide added-value towards the fostering of the adaptive capacities of urban communities and local institutions in the face of climate change.
This paper presents fieldwork research realized in October 2008, the aim of which was to bridge knowledge between vulnerability and asset-based research, local organizations from the communities and institutions and available scientific hard knowledge about local hazards and risks. This cross-cutting issue is central considering that no adaptation process is viable unless both communities and institutions participate, feedback into and have the power to assess the usefulness of research that concerns them. Evaluating existing constraints to people’s livelihoods towards adaptation to climate change is of the utmost importance to produce local knowledge following the call of the international scientific community and to engage local research and policy-making institutions with the issue. Colombia is a rich but at the same time fragile combination of ecosystems and it will be fully exposed to the intensification of extreme events and to the risk of natural disasters over the next decades, as recently stated by research carried out by the National Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Research (IDEAM, 2007), which produced a set of modeled scenarios of climate change impact on the broad regions that make up the country.
Andrea Lampis (Rome, 1965) has lived in Colombia since 1996, where he works as a researcher and lecturer at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies on Development (CIDER) at the University of Los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia). He has an M.Sc. Sociology (1995) from the London School of Economics (LSE) and he is completing the revision for his Ph.D. on ‘Poverty and Vulnerability; an assets, resources and capability impact study of low-income groups in Bogotá’ at the Social Policy department, also at the LSE. His most recent research and teaching activities articulate around a central interest in vulnerability and livelihoods. On the one hand, he is exploring the social protection implications of a capability and asset-based approach for people and households’ well-being and, on the other, he is looking at the issue of low-income groups' adaptation to climate change and to the impact of environmental and natural disasters on urban livelihoods.
In the UK he has published a study on 'Access to health in urban areas,’ in Beall, J. (Ed.) 1997, A City for All: Recognizing Difference and Working with Diversity, ZED Books: London; and ‘Exploring the Temporal Logic Model: A Colombian Case Study Evaluating Assistance to Internally Displaced People,' inCampbell, J.R. and Holland, J. (Eds.) 2005, Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Development Research: Monitoring and Evaluation and Generating Numbers, ITDG Publications: London.
In Colombia, the results of a short panel study on vulnerability in Bogotá, Cali and Manizales conducted in 2006 as a follow up of the PhD research have been recently published as ‘Vulnerabilidad y Protección Social en Colombia: Estudios de Caso en Bogotá, Cali y Manizales’, in Zorro, C. (comp.) 2007, El Desarrollo: Perspectivas y Dimensiones – Aportes Interdisciplinarios, CIDER – Embajada de Los Países Bajos en Colombia: Bogotá. He has kept a strong interest in research on development and Latin America in the UK where he has networked with the IDS in Sussex, the Institute for Natural Resource in Greenwich, the International Institute for Environment and Development, the School of Environment and Development in Manchester and the University of Bath. More information, abstract and some publications in Spanish are available at http://alampis.uniandes.edu.co/
Globalisation and the State:
What lessons does the Latin American 'new left' offer?
Peadar Kirby, 21 January 2009
Peadar Kirby, BA, BD, H Dip in Ed, PhD (LSE), is Professor of International Politics and Public Policy at the University of Limerick. His latest published books are Contesting the State: Lessons from the Irish Case, co-edited with Maura Adshead and Michelle Millar (Manchester University Press, 2008) and Taming the Tiger: Social Exclusion in a Globalised Ireland, co-edited with David Jacobson and Deiric Ó Broin (Tasc with New Island Books, 2006).
Earlier in 2006 he published Vulnerability and Violence: The Impact of Globalisation (Pluto Press, 2006). Other books include Introduction to Latin America: Twenty-First Century Challenges (Sage, 2003), The Celtic Tiger in Distress: Growth with Inequality in Ireland (Palgrave, 2002), Reinventing Ireland: Culture, Society and the Global Economy, co-edited with Luke Gibbons and Michael Cronin (Pluto Press, 2002), Poverty Amid Plenty: World and Irish Development Reconsidered(Trócaire and Gill & Macmillan, 1997), and Rich and Poor: Perspectives on Tackling Inequality in Ireland, co-edited with Sara Cantillon, Carmel Corrigan and Joan O’Flynn (Oak Tree Press in association with the Combat Poverty Agency, 2001).
He has recently written a study on the relationship between growth and poverty in the Irish growth model for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) which is being published as part of a larger international study on policy regimes and poverty reduction. He has published journal articles in New Political Economy, Review of International Political Economy, The European Journal of Development Research, Globalizations, Trócaire Development Review, Irish Studies in International Affairs, The Irish Review and Administration.
A Precursor to Peace: Building Dialogue among the Armed Forces, Civil Society and ex-Guerrilleros in Colombia
Jennifer Schirmer, 22 January 2009
Dr Jennifer Schirmer holds a Ph.D. in Political Anthropology and is Senior Researcher & Director of the Program on Conflict Analysis, Armed Actors and Peace Dialogues at the University of Oslo.
Jennifer conducts research, writes and advises on issues of peacebuilding, on engaging the armed actors (both State security forces and nonState insurgents) in preparatory dialogues to peace negotiations, on the origins of guerrilla movements and their willingness to accept peace accords, ceasefires and de-mobilization, and on truth commissions and human rights movements. She has firsthand experience with both sides of the conflicts – of armed actors and the victims of violence -- in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile and South Africa. Dr Schirmer served as a special consultant on military affairs to the United Nations Historical Clarification Commission for Guatemala.
In 2006, Dr Schirmer was awarded a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellowship for 2006-2007 in the Program of International Peace at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. She has received two John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Grants in the Program on Global Security and Sustainability: one in 2002 for 18-months’ research on “Protagonists of War: The Insurgents’ View: Memories and Justificatory Narratives of the Guatemalan Guerrilla Leaders and Cadre” and one in 1991 for research on Female Relatives of the Disappeared in Latin America.
She has also conducted interviews and written extensively about examining rights as the basis for women's resistance to repressive regimes(published in Feminist Review, Harvard Human rights Journal, etc).Her article “’Those Who Die for Life Cannot be Called Dead’: Women and Human Rights in Latin America”, published in the Harvard Human Rights Yearbook of the Harvard Law School, and Feminist Review. Recently she assisted in writing the “Report on Gender in Peacebuilding” for the 2008 Oslo Forum.
In 1998, her book, The Guatemalan Military Project:A Violence Called Democracy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998 & 2000) won the PIOOM award for best human rights book from the Dutch Interdisciplinary Research Program on Root Causes of Human Rights Violations.
Currently, she continues to direct a large, 8-year project funded by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry that is working to to integrate the military and other armed actors into the ongoing peace processes in Colombia. Through her project she has developed dialogues that includes participants from the military (primarily brigade and division generals), private sector, government, civil society, ex-guerrilleros and the international community. These dialogues have successfully brought together sectors that were not only not on speaking terms but were in combat. On the basis of these dialogues, Dr Schirmer is writing a book that lays out a new approach to peacebuilding.
Gender, ethnicity, and class in 20th-century Suriname: A case study of Grace Schneiders-Howard
Rosemarijne Hoefte, 28 January 2009
Suriname is often portrayed as a multicultural paradise and an example to the rest of the world. The emphasis is on the harmonious co-existence of different ethnic and religious groups, while gender or class remain out of the equation. In other words: the plural society model is still very much alive in Suriname but the question is whether it is still valid. A case study of the life of Grace Schneiders-Howard shows the importance of ethnicity, class, and gender in colonial Suriname. Grace Schneiders-Howard (1869-1968) was the first female politician in Suriname. An examination of her working life leads to a portrait of a woman who contributed more to Surinamese society through her involvement in public health care than through her elected membership of the Colonial States (legislature). Schneiders-Howard was an exceptional woman with remarkable drive and energy, one without equal in Suriname. Yet she is virtually unacknowledged in books on the history of twentieth-century Suriname surface. What role did gender, ethnicity, and class play in her life and in the legacy she left behind?
Rosemarijn Hoefte is head of the department of Collections and coordinator of the Caribbean Expert Centre at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden, the Netherlands. She is the managing editor of the New West Indian Guide. She is currently working on a biography of the first female politician in Suriname and a socio-cultural history of twentieth-century Suriname.
Prosecuting Pinochet: human rights trials in Chile 1998-2008
Film screening and panel Q & A
Cath Collins, Carlos Reyes-Manzo and David Sugarman, 6 February 2009
In October 1998, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in a West End clinic charged with crimes against humanity. A decade later, the era of enforceable international justice which some thought the 'Pinochet case' would usher in seems as illusory as ever. Pinochet, after all, far from seeing the inside of a Spanish courtroom was sent home on an Air Force jet to a rapturous welcome from his military supporters. But what happened next?
'The Judge and The General' , a US-Chilean joint production, tells the story of the domestic trials and tribulations of Augusto Pinochet through the figure of Juan Guzman, the Chilean judge charged with investigating Pinochet's human rights crimes in the domestic courts. Initially a conservative figure who had supported the regime, Guzman is slowly but irremediably transformed by what he sees and hears. A powerful testimony to the individual and collective human dramas which lie behind the 'Pinochet case', this UK premiere of the film will be followed by a question and answer session.
C.L.R.James and other Trinidadian Marxists, 1930s-1950s
Peter Fraser, 11 February 2009
Peter Fraser studied at Sussex University with Donald Wood. He has taught at the University of the West Indies and Goldsmith’s College London. He has worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Education, Institute of Commonwealth Studies (London) and at the Du Bois Institute, Harvard. He is currently a research fellow at London Metropolitan University. His main research interests include Caribbean migration, migrant intellectuals and black British history.
Brazilian Anthropology Divided: notions of race in contemporary Brazil
Peter Fry, 17 February 2009
Just as French social scientists are divided over the issue of whether or not to include “racial” and "ethnic” data in official census, so their Brazilian counterparts are divided over the propriety of recent public policies directed to “the Black population/Afrodescendentes”, in particular “racial quotas” for candidates for university entrance and a Statute of Racial Equality which envisages race-based affirmative action in most areas of social life. In my talk I will discuss these rival points of view, which, I will argue, are constructed from diverse epistemologies which are in their turn related to and justify distinct utopian visions for Brazil ’s future.
Peter Fry was born in England in 1941. He read social anthropology at Cambridge University and received his doctorate from the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, London University in 1969. Based on field work in the then Southern Rhodesia, the thesis, published as Spirits of Protest (Cambridge, CUP, 1972), describes and analyses the significance of a return to the ancestors in the context of the political struggle against the colonial order. In 1966 he become a member of the Anthropology Department at UCL but soon left in 1970 to take up a post at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil to cooperate in the founding of undergraduate and graduate degree courses in Social Anthropology. He conducted research into Afro-Brazilian religion, and a small community in the State of São Paulo where an “African language” is spoken (with Carlos Vogt, Cafundó: Africa no Brasil, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 1996) he also wrote about homosexuality (with Edward McCrae, O que é homossexualidade, São Paulo, Brasiliense, 1982) and published a set of essays on the politics of culture in Brazil. (Para Ingês Ver: Identidade e Política na Cultura Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1982).
In 1983 he accepted an invitation to teach at the Post Graduate Programme in Social Anthropology of the National Museum in Rio, where he stayed until 1985 when he joined the Ford Foundation, first in the Rio de Janeiro office (1985-89) and then to set up a new office in Harare, Zimbabwe (1989-1993). On returning to Brazil in 1992, he joined the staff of the Department of Cultural Anthropology of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro where he remains to this day. On his return to Brazil he became newly interested in racial politics due in great part to the contrast he had observed between post colonial societies in Zimbabwe and Mozambique which gave him a new perspective on Brazil. He has therefore spent most of his time since then researching and writing critically on racial politics in Brazil. (A Persistência da Raça: ensaios antropológicos sobre o Brasil e a África austral, Rio de Janeiro, Civilização Brasileira, 2005 and, with other authors, Divisões Perigosas políticas raciais no Brasil contemporâneo, Record, 2007)
Sovereignty, Slavery and Power in the Colonial City: The Slave Conspiracy of Cartagena de Indias in 1693
Anthony McFarlane, 25 February 2009
In April 1693, the citizens and authorities of Cartagena feared an imminent insurrection of slaves in the city. To confront this threat, the city's military forces were put on an immediate state of alert, and magistrates instructed to arrest suspects. This action and the ensuring investigation cast some fresh light on the character of both slavery and governance in Cartagena and, as Cartagena was one of the major centres of slavery in the Greater Caribbean region, prompts questions about the stability of slave societies in the region in the later seventeenth century. This paper enquires into the nature of slave resistance on the Spanish Main, the evolution of Spanish policy towards maroon communities, and the extent to which the Spanish crown was able to enforce its orders in slave societies.
Anthony McFarlane is Professor of Latin American History in the History Department and School of Comparative American Studies, at the University of Warwick. His research interests have focused primarily on the histories of Colombia and Ecuador during the Bourbon and early independence periods, with particular attention to political culture, popular participation in politics and slave resistance. He has also published work on the British colonial world in the Americas and comparative essays on Euro-American empires. He is currently finishing a book on the Spanish American wars of independence.
Labour Standards and Social Justice: Theory and Practice in Latin America and the Caribbean
Convenors: Kevin J. Middlebrook and Caterina Perrone, 24 April 2009
The question of how to define and promote labour standards in the context of increasingly globalised economic competition has stimulated intense debate about corporate social responsibility, and it has complicated efforts to negotiate regional free-trade agreements and strained World Trade Organisation deliberations. Identifying ways of protecting core labour rights under conditions of economic globalisation is thus a crucial test of the capacity of national governments, multilateral organisations, transnational corporations, trade unions and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to address social justice concerns at a time of rapid economic change.
The purpose of this half-day workshop is to explore the current state of debate concerning international labour standards and the strategies adopted by multilateral agencies, unions, labour-rights NGOs, and leading firms to safeguard labour rights and promote corporate social responsibility on labour issues. We particularly seek to draw on diverse actors’ practical experiences in this area in order to assess the value of voluntary codes of corporate conduct as a multi-actor, collaborative strategy for addressing worker rights issues.
Québec and Canadian Federalism: Critical Reflections
Guy Laforest, Wednesday 29 April
In 1867, some British North American colonies got together, with the consent of British authorities, to form a federal Dominion within the Empire. This was the act of birth of the the Canadian federation. In 2017, Canadians will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of their federal polity. French Canadians and Quebeckers have often played key roles in the evolution of the Canadian experiment with federalism. In this conference, I shall attempt to discuss critically various interpretive trends concerning Canadian federalism in Québec, insisting on key and familiar historical milestones: 1867 and the founding of the federation, the second World War and the emergence of a Canadian Welfare State, the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s in Québec and the emergence of an independentist movement, the transformations of Canadian nationalism in the 1980s as well as contemporary dimensions. In English-speaking Canada, many observers, following Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson, believe that Québec always demands "more", more money, more power, more autonomy, more recognition, while forgetting the requirements of solidarity. I shall also discuss this undeniably significant perception.
The Fujimori trial in Peru and its significance for the Colombian situation
Alirio Uribe Muñoz, President of Colectivo de Abogados de José Alvear Restrepo, Bogotá, Colombia
Colombian human rights lawyer, Alirio Uribe, has been one of the International Observers at the recent Fujimori trial and was in Lima when the final ruling was given on 7 April 2009. Alirio will discuss the Fujimori trial experience - the sentence and possible outcomes of the appeal process - then talk about the significance of this for Colombia, i.e. bringing to trial a former head of state, as a direct/indirect author of human rights abuses.
When and Why did Haiti fall Behind? From Independence to the US Occupation?
Victor Bulmer-Thomas, ISA, Wednesday 3 June 2009
Haiti today is the poorest country in the Americas. Yet on the eve of the French Revolution it was the richest colony in the Caribbean. Many attempts have been made to explain when and why Haiti fell behind, but none of these are satisfactory. Using a specially constructed database that covers not only Haiti but also the rest of the Caribbean, this paper identifies the two decades before the First World War as the period when the Haitian economy entered a structural crisis from which it never fully recovered and puts forward a new explanation for why this happened.
Victor Bulmer-Thomas is a Visiting Professor at Florida International University. He was previously Director of Chatham House (2001-6) and Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at London University (1992-8). He is currently working on an economic history of the Caribbean from the Napoleonic Wars to the present.
Latin America after Neoliberalism
Julia Buxton, Nicola Phillips, Francisco Panizza, Diego Sanchez-Ancochea, Pia Riggirozzi, Jean Grugel, 5 June 2009
How far have the economic crises and loss of faith in neoliberalism led to the emergence of new regional political economy? To what extent can we discern conscious state policies of compensation for market failures emerging in the region? The usual route towards answering questions of this sort is to make a distinction between social democratic responses to neoliberalism in Latin America and the more radical alternatives of Venezuela or Bolivia. We discuss here, however, whether we can identify a shift towards a kind of 'postneoliberalism' development strategy in Latin America, what that might entail.
Body, Language, and Ontology in Selected Latin American Vanguardist Poetry (Huidobro, Bandeira, Girondo, Trindade)
Bruce Dean Willis, 24 June 2009
Early twentieth-century Latin American writers, whether they identified as vanguardists or not, were influenced by avant-garde visual and linguistic fragmented renderings of the body. Poets such as Vicente Huidobro and Manuel Bandeira constructed textual bodies that experiment with relationships between structure and content, as words to flesh, in interpretative models such as the body politic, the portrait, or corporeal aspects such as health and speech. Is splitting an infinitive merely a grammatical operation? What are the linguistic ramifications of a gender change operation? Questions such as these will be addressed in the diverse contexts of Huidobro’s Altazor, Bandeira’s Libertinagem, Oliverio Girondo’s Veinte poemas para ser leídos en el tranvía, and Solano Trindade’s Poemas Negros.
Bruce Dean Willis is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has published the monograph Aesthetics of Equilibrium: The Vanguard Poetics of Vicente Huidobro and Mário de Andrade (2006), and articles in Brasil/Brazil, Chasqui, Gestos, Hispania, Hispanófila, and South Atlantic Review. Presently he is researching representations of the body in early twentieth-century Latin American literature.