(Source: H-Announce)
Via H-Announce,
we learned of a workshop that aims to bring together senior and junior scholars
of law and/or environment who are working in the field of Indian Ocean World
history.
Type:
Workshop
Date:
May 15, 2019
Location:
Pennsylvania, United States
Subject Fields:
Asian History / Studies, Colonial and
Post-Colonial History / Studies, Environmental History / Studies, Law and Legal
History, Maritime History / Studies
Ordering the Anthropocene: Law &
the Environment in the Indian Ocean World A workshop convened by Debjani Bhattacharyya (Drexel University)
and Laurie Wood (Florida State University)4-5th October 2019Hosted by the
Department of History, Drexel University, with the generous sponsorship
of the American Society for Legal History & Drexel University
What can historians of law achieve from
engaging with their colleagues studying environmental changes over time? How
have emerging regulatory regimes (imperial, property-oriented, maritime,
medical, etc.) joined the domains of science and law in new ways? And how can
legal historians retool their methods to study deep histories of landscape
transformations and climate? These questions are especially pertinent for the
Indian Ocean region, where these concerns have both past and contemporary
relevance: e.g. rising sea levels in the Maldives and Andaman Islands; coastal
erosion and disputes over new-land formation
along the littorals of Bay of Bengal; island-building in Singapore (with sand from Gulf states);
disaster relief following the 2004 tsunami and earthquake, which especially
affected Indonesia and Malaysia; food security around the Horn of Africa; and
some of the world’s busiest shipping
routes.
Time shapes the traffic in what constitutes
truth in these two broad disciplinary arenas. Legal historians typically
analyze cases, each with a specific lifespan of years or decades. Environmental
phenomena, by contrast, often span centuries or even geological epochs. We
propose a workshop to address the temporality of expertise and evidence which
will bring legal historians whose disciplinary focus is bounded by the
temporality of a case, together with environmental historians and historians of
science who are increasingly doing histories of deep-time. For instance, when
legal historians study regulatory regimes of intellectual property to material
cultures. It works with an anthropogenic lifespan: copyrights, patents,
objects, labor, commodities. Whereas environmental phenomenon, which are
increasingly entering regulatory domains, work with long timescales spanning
geological, seasonal and solar temporalities. As states are beginning to exert
regulatory powers increasingly in legal and scientific regimes, the legal
timescale of a case is getting entangled in deep historical timescales.
We invite abstracts for an exploratory
workshop, where we will discuss articles/chapters in progress and which have
not been submitted for publication. Articles which are in preliminary review
stages are welcome, but not those in galley proofs. The purpose of the workshop
is to receive comments and feedback on works in progress with the possibility
for incorporating the discussions of the workshop. The presenters will be
paired with senior discussants who will offer feedback on their
articles/chapters and then open it up for discussion. Presenters will be
required to submit their articles/chapters of 8000 words and no more than
12,000 words by 30 August 2019. All presenters and discussants will be required
to read the articles beforehand which will be made available through a secure
dropbox account. We will also conduct a half-day field-trip on October 5th. The purpose of the workshop is to:
- Bring
together senior and junior scholars of law and/or environment who are
working in the newly-vibrant field of Indian Ocean World history.
- Generate
a methodological conversation between legal historians and historians of
environment and science anchored on the category of time and how differing
notions shape practices of evidence selection, gathering and testimony in
the court and laboratory.
The workshop will consist of 4 panels, with 2
presenters in each panel. We will pair legal historians with historians of
environment to explore how common terminology around evidence, witness, reason,
expertise is affected by concepts of time that are distinct in each discipline.
We welcome papers exploring the
following questions broadly:
- Where
does law/do legal regimes collide with the material world?
- Where/when/how/why
do natural phenomena become entangled in ordering regimes?
- How
do these relationships (re)configure the human as social (e.g. relational,
hierarchical, vocal) and material (e.g. embodied,
constrained by lifespan, etc.)?
Application Instructions
Interested applicants should submit a 300-word
abstract and short c.v. to the conveners by 15 May 2019: Debjani
Bhattacharyya (db893@drexel.edu) and Laurie Wood (lmwood@fsu.edu ). Article-length papers
(8,000-10,000 words) will be due for circulation among participants and invited
commentators by 30 August 2019. Domestic airfare, accommodation, and most meals
will be provided thanks to support from the American Society for Legal History
and Drexel University.
Contact Info:
Contact Email:
More info here
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