About this Event
The decades-long ascendancy and triumphant march of human rights since 1948, culminating in the long decade of global liberal consensus following 1989, would suggest that these rights should have by now gained currency as self-evident and irreversible. Yet, it would be, at best, naïve, at worst, dangerous to succumb to this illusion of irreversibility and universal acceptance. There are many direct challenges and violations, which, when taken together, can give a sense of human rights in retreat. Human rights may also be the subject of rhetorical ruses and ideological trickery, with governors demagogically claiming continued commitment to the core values of human rights that they undermine.
While much has been said about the causes and consequences of such hard and soft challenges to human rights, this talk highlights a structural feature that often receives short shrift in contemporary debates: the role of demography. The event will also investigate two interlinked facets. First, majoritarian electoral politics, in which regimes seek to draw legitimacy based on the claim to speak in the name of the “pure” or “real” people, coupled with whipping up historical or current ethno-nationalist grievances against minorities and migrants. Second, demographic panics that are used to curtail women’s rights and reproductive autonomy in the name of an existential threat to the nation, couched in a rhetoric of demographic security. Together, these not only result in a range of rights violations, but also justify them as necessary to ensure continued national survival.
At the same time, we also see how human rights have been renewed in the face of these demography-based challenges: the courage of Iranian women leading the movement for freedom and bodily autonomy, or the resistance of Afghan women continuing to insist on their right to education. Just as the demographic challenges to human rights span the Global North and South, so do efforts to counteract them. What, then, might a truly global mobilisation look like for migrants' rights, women’s rights and reproductive rights?
This joint Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Young Academy of Scotland (YAS), Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA), and Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh (IASH) event will run between 17:30-19:00 at the Reid Concert Hall, University of Edinburgh, Bristo Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9AL.
A reception between 19:00 - 20:00 will be held at the Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton St, Edinburgh EH8 9AB.
SPEAKER
Shalini Randeria
Shalini Randeria was elected as president and rector of Central European University in 2021. She is the first woman, and the first person from the Global South, to take up this position since the founding of the university 30 years ago. She has had a distinguished academic career as a sociologist/social anthropologist at institutions of higher education across Europe. She was rector of the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, and a professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, where she directed the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy. Randeria holds the Excellence Chair at the University of Bremen, where she leads a research group on “soft authoritarianisms.” She is deputy chair of the Class of Social and Related Sciences, Academia Europaea and a distinguished fellow of the Munk School, Toronto University. Randeria has published widely on the anthropology of globalization, law, the state, and social movements with a regional focus on India. Her influential podcast series, Democracy in Question, launched in 2021, is now in its ninth season.
SPEAKER
Professor Lesley McAra CBE FRSE
Lesley McAra is an alumna of the University of Edinburgh and of the Open University. In 1995, she joined the University of Edinburgh as Lecturer in Criminology, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2005, and to the Chair of Penology in 2009. Her inaugural lecture can be listened to here. Lesley is currently the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) and, in that role, is leading a collaborative research project funded by the RSE on women’s global leadership. She is also the Assistant Principal of Community Relations. Lesley was the first ever woman (in over 300 years) to be appointed as Dean of Edinburgh Law School and, with alumna Karina McTeague, set up the Leadership Foundation for Women in Law. She was also the inaugural Director of the Edinburgh Futures Institute (2018-2022), a major new investment focused on data-driven innovation for social good. In 2018, she was elected as President of the European Society of Criminology and, following her term of office, continues her involvement in the ESC, contributing to working groups on juvenile justice and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the past twenty-six years, she has been co-director of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime with Professor Susan McVie. She has won multiple prizes for research impact, including, in 2019, the ESRC award for Outstanding Public Policy Impact, and was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List (2018) for services to Criminology.
Important point to note:
- This event may involve photography. If you would like to avoid being photographed, please speak to a member of the team when you arrive.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Reid Concert Hall, Bristo Square, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00