Critique internationale - Content
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[Is Unesco at the Origin of Anti-Racism? Historical Ethnography of Programs on Race (1946-1952)]
UNESCO is considered as one of the main actors of international antiracism politics, which emerged after the Second World War. However, the “racial question” is not a UNESCO priority at the turn of the 1940-50s and this institution was never able to define and implement a clear and explicit policy on the subject. A historical ethnography of the UNESCO archives in Paris, especially at the time of the creation and the first meetings of the Department of social sciences, reveals that the debates on racial questions took place in an often forced and improvised way. Far from the linear narrative of the origins of antiracism, I will insist on the indeterminacy of the elaboration of UNESCO programs on race between 1946 and 1952.
[From the “Indian Race” to Practical Essentialism: The Convergence of the Inter-American Indian Institute with the International Labor Organization (1940-1957)]
This article examines the competitive collaboration between the Inter-American Indian Institute and the International Labor Organization (ILO) as an integral component and example of the construction of the indigenista field in the years 1940-1957. The difference in the organizational and political power respectively wielded by these two organizations played a decisive role in the configuration of the field and the conceptual and operational definition of “Indians”. The article reveals the difficulty and ambivalence experienced by the two organizations as they moved away from a racialist perspective and allows one to see how, in the absence of theoretical agreement, the accumulation of pragmatic considerations ultimately made it possible to define “Indians” and indigeneity. The victory of the ILO in its friendly struggle against the Institute for leadership of the movement gave the inter-American indigenista field an influence that it would have had difficulty obtaining solely on the basis of regional institutions. The “practical essentialization” of the concept of “Indian” that then took place converted the “Indian of the Americas” into a paradigmatic case, that of “Indigenous Peoples” at the international scale.
[The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination: A Pragmatic Approach to Ethnic-Based Statistics (1970-2018)]
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) was established in the framework of the international Convention of the same name, which was adopted in 1965 and has since been ratified by 182 states. Its working methods have evolved over the course of its fifty years of existence. Its ambition to document de facto rather than solely de jure discrimination led the Committee to request that states equip themselves with statistical and categorization systems allowing for the inequalities between the various population groups – including ethnic and racial groups – to be measured. Our analysis of CERD’s archives from 1970 to 2018 and interviews conducted with several of their present-day experts show how the request for demographic data revealing, among other things, ethnic and racial origins became established despite internal debates among experts and widespread reluctance on the part of states. Underscoring this approach, that we called a pragmatic turn in the fight against discrimination, contributes to the literature on the role played by statistics in global governance as well as that on the way international organizations deal with racial issues.
[Adjudicating “Race” and “Ethnicity”: International Courts and the Dilemmas of the Racial Lexicon]
How do three international courts – the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the European Court of Human Rights – interpret the concepts of race and ethnicity when it is necessary to do so in order to rule on cases brought before them? While international judges are increasingly uncomfortable with the older, rigid and essentializing visions of these notions, the search for new modes of elucidating them has taken place via a process of trial and error that has been a source of hesitation and ambiguity. The three courts characterize the issue that arises for them as an opposition between objective and subjective approaches to race and ethnicity. Upon examination, this distinction is revealed to be partly misleading as it masks the plurality of competing issues and conflates what are in reality contradictory positions. One further observes certain differences in the approach taken by the European Court, on the one hand, and the two international tribunals, on the other hand, that may partly be explained by the distinct structural constraints that impinge upon them.
[Genetic Diversity and Human Groups: The Work of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee and the UNESCO Declarations on Human Genetics (1993-2005)]
The UNESCO General Conference has adopted three Declarations referring to human genetic data. They were prepared by sessions and reports from the International Bioethics Committee, established in 1993. For a long time the only world body devoted to the examination of bioethical issues, it was aware of the problem posed, both at the level of individuals and populations, by racist interpretations of genetic data and knowledge. By examining the proceedings and reports of the Committee, mainly for the period 1993-2005, and comparing them with the three Declarations adopted in 1997, 2003 and 2005, it is possible to take stock of the vocabulary and values of the international bioethical regulatory body and norms as they relate to human groups and genetic diversity. The aim here is to clarify how the categorization of human groups is problematic in the light of the rise of the genetic paradigm and the place accorded to entities that occupy an intermediary position between the individual and the species.
[The Collective Production of Reflexivity as a Way of Dealing with Fear on the Field?]
Much has now been written about the ethnographer’s relationship to her field, particularly in what concerns “difficult fields”. By contrast, few texts have addressed the manner in which she works in stressful contexts. In general, the ethnographer’s emotions rarely figure in accounts or are only indirectly touched upon, even when discussing her experience of dangerous situations. Little is thus known regarding the manner in which the experience of fear can determine access to the field or shape the investigative relationship. Above all, virtually no text considers the tools used by the ethnographer to objectify her experience so as to ultimately draw up the results of her research. Yet the ethnographer’s relationship to the constraints of the context do as much to determine her understanding of the field as they do her ability to reconstruct her experience. On the basis of an ethnographic study I conducted of contentious collectives in Cuba, I will thus consider, not just the effects of these affective states, but also the manner in which I was able to contain them when writing my ethnographic account / via the activity of writing.
[(Re)producing Labor Unions, Producing Class: The Construction of the Working Class in an Argentine Labor Union]
How is the working class produced and reproduced in the everyday practice of labor union activists? In FOETRA, the largest telecommunications labor union in the metropolitan region of Buenos Aires, efforts to produce the working class as a political category and source of solidarity consist in constructing a sense of equality while simultaneously identifying the divisions separating workers from one another. Two mechanisms are at work. On the one hand, an active effort to define the class by way of formal initiatives and labor union training conjoined with a political project to expand the limits of the working class. On the other hand, the development of shared narrative and collective memory, an informal and affective undertaking that depends on the ties woven between activists, particularly the youngest ones and their elders. In dialogue with recent debates regarding the concept of “social class”, this analysis draws upon ethnographic doctoral research conducted in 2013-2014.
[Science-Driven Climatization of Agricultural Issues? The Controversies Surrounding Climate-Smart Agriculture]
Agricultural issues were long absent from negotiations relating to climate change. In the late 2000s, a window of opportunity nevertheless opened for placing them on the agenda of climate governance. It was in this context that the notion of climate-smart agriculture emerged. Initially championed by the FAO, it was presented as a scientific concept that would allow climate issues and issues relating to food safety to be jointly conceived. By examining the performative role that science played in this dynamic, the process tracing approach used here casts light on how the notion developed and thereby the process by which agricultural policy came to be climatized. I identify two periods: the period from 2001 to 2009 during which agriculture first made it onto the agenda of international negotiations regarding climate change; and the diffusion and depoliticization of this notion that began in 2010. For, by setting problems in a technical framework, climate-smart agriculture tends to obscure the political controversies with which it is nevertheless associated.
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Gabriel Gatti (ed.), Un mundo de víctimas, Barcelone, Anthropos, 2017, 432 pages.
Marion Fresia et Philippe Lavigne Delville (dir.), Au cœur des mondes de l’aide internationale. Regards et postures ethnographiques, Paris, Karthala-IRD-APAD, 2018, 364 pages.
Maria Bigday, L’engagement intellectuel sous régime autoritaire. Les « think tankers » biélorusses entre expertise et dissidence, Paris, Dalloz, 2017, XIII-400 pages.
